ts"^ 



' / 
/ 



A GLANCE 

AT 

THE POSITION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 



CONTRASTED WITII THAT Or 



ITS OPPONENTS, 



A VIEW OF ITS CLAIMS TO THE SUPPORT AND CONFIDENCE 
OF THE PEOPLE. 



BY A SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIAN. 



" THE UNION MUST BE PRESERVED. 

Our government has just completed a cycle of eighty years ; and no patriot can review the 
past, realize the present, or contemplate the future (if the people are but true to themselves) 
■without feeling proud that he is an American citizen, and that his government is the "world's 
best hope ;" without responding from the depths of his heart to the noble sentiment "The 
Union must be preserved;" and without resolving that to maintain it he would, "with a 
firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, pledge his life, his fortune, and his sacred 
honor." But why this profound attachment to our government — this intense devotion to the 
Union ? Are such feelings the result of mere hallucinations — the freaks of a blind sentiment- 
ality ? No ! They are the spontaneous impulses of honest hearts, enlightened by the evidences 
of successful experiment and of positive experience. United, we resolved to be free ; united, 
we achieved that freedom ; and united, we adopted a form of government which, in the hands 
of wise and patriotic men, has yielded to the people of this country an amount of prosperity 
and happiness unparalleled in the history of our race. Our national greatness has increased 
with a rapidity and vigor unknown in the annals of the world ; and at this moment the 
grandeur of our system and the glory of our achievements, whether in the field or the cabinet, 
in moral, scientific, or intellectual enterprises, or in the ubiquity of the "stars and stripes" in 
every sea, illustrating its national characteristics of valor and justice, present not only fit sub- 
jects of modest contemplation by the sovereign people of the land, but those of admiratioa 
and wonder by every lover of human rights in every quarter of the globe. These magnificent 
achievements, together with the actual and rational liberty — the protection of person and of 
property secured by law which every citizen, rich and poor, alike enjoys — are the natural 
elements which endear us all to the Union, and which teach us to feel that they are the legiti- 
mate fruits, under the blessings of Providence, of a well-digested, well-balanced system of 
organic law, which recognises at once the sovereignty of the States of this confederacy in its 
fullest extent, and the capacity of the people for self-government, as expressed through their 
majorities. 

If, then, the constitution of the United States, with the political policy deduced from it in 
our past history, has been the chief source of our'national greatness and personal happineasj 
and has rendered the Union so sacred in our estimation, it behooves every good citizen to 
watch with sleepless vigilance that constitution and policy, and the character and qualifica- 
tions of those to whom its administration may be intrusted, in order that this government 
shall be conducted in future with the same signal success, and maintained in the same purity 
and integrity ; and that its accredited agents shall receive from posterity the honor due to 






2 '^\. 

fidelity, to patriotism, and wisdom. It was one of the maxims of our revolutionary fathers 
that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles was indispensable to the preservation of a 
free government; and, that we may be the better prepared to discharge our duty at this time, 
let us in the observance of this injunction, take a retrospect of events connected with, and 
immediately following, the adoption of our constitution, and of the circumstances which led to 
the formation of the two parties which have heretofore controlled the destinies of this country. 

The great difference which characterized the political aetors of that period, and gave tone 
and consistency to the peculiar sentiments of the two parties, arose out of the views respect- 
ively entertained by them as to the powers of the federal government under the constitution, 
and the fundamental principle of the capacity of the people for self-government. One party, 
headed by Alexander Hamilton, desired immense powers to be vested in this government, and, 
as a necessary consequence, rejected the idea that the great body of the people were capable of 
Belf-goverament. In accordance with these principles the sovereignty and powers of the 
respective States would be curtailed to the extent of the enlargement of powers made in favor 
of the federal government ; and that party has ever since attempted to assume and to acquire 
for this government, by a latitudinous construction of the language of the constitution, powers 
not expressly granted by that instrument. 

The other party, led by Thomas Jefferson, was in favor of reserving to the States all power 
as far as practicable, and of delegating to the federal government only such as were absolutely 
necessary for the good of the whole country, and requisite for the transaction of affairs apper- 
taining to a community of interests. This party regarded the capacity and right of the people 
to govern themselves as one of the indispensable elements of a republican government, in 
support of which, and in answer to the contrary doctrine of the Hamilton school, Mr. Jefferson 
made this brief but conclusive argument. He said : "I know, indeed, that some fear that a 
republican government cannot be strong ; that this government is not strong enough. But 
would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government 
which had so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this govern- 
ment—the world's best hope— may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. 
I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one 
where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would 
'meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that 
man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the 
government of others ? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him ? Let 
history answer the question." 

The Jeffersonian doctrine prevailed, and the constitution was acknowledged by all to be the 
supreme law of the land. But each party deduced from it a course of policy in conformity 
with iheir original views of fundamental principles — thfe one based upon a wide and loose 
construction of that instrument, with a system of measures pointing to a centralization of 
power in the federal government, and tending invariably to favor the few at the expense of 
the many in whom they avowed a want of confidence, and from whom they withheld all 
sympathy ; and hence their support of monopolies in various forms, and their continued 
tendency to encroach upon the rights of the States. The other, or Jeffersonian school, founded 
their policy and measures upon a strict construction of the constitution and a sacred regard 
for the rights of the States, with a full confidence in the integrity and honesty of the people. 
In pursuance of these great principles, they opposed monopolies in every form, whether pre- 
sented in the shape of a monster bank, infusing its corruptions in the administration of the 
government ; in the equally pernicious one of a protective tarifi^, taking from the mouth of 
labor the bread it had earned to be'given to consolidate capital, howling for exclusive privi- 
leges • or whether in the more insidious and fascinating garb of distribution, seeking to 
convert the common property of all the States into a government bequest, and to impose upon 
each devisee the duty of licking the hand that presented the gift. Democracy assumed higher 
and nobler ground. She threw her flag to the breeze, and inscribed thereon, in bold characters, 
"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, political or religious 



peace, commerce,'and honest friendship with all nations ; the support of the State governments 
in all their rights, as the most competent administrators of our domestic concerns and the 
truest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies ; the preservation of the general govern- 
ment in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety 
abroad ; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, as the vital principle of repub- 
lics ; economy in the public expenditures, that labor may be lightly burdened ; a wise and 
frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, and shall leave them 
otherwise free to regulate their pursuits of industry and improvement; freedom of religion, 
freedom of the press, and freedom of speech," as the creed of the political faith that would con- 
summate our happiness. 

The people rallied to this noble standard erected by the great apostle of democracy, and the 
government was placed in the hands of that party whose distinguished and beloved leaders — 
Washington, Jeffersod, Madison, Jackson, Polk, and others — have acted as the servants of 
the people, and directed the destinies of this great nation, with what success let the people 
estify in November next, as they have done in former times. With the exception of a few: 
brief periods, making in all about 14 years out of 80, the democratic party has been domi 
nant ; but those brief periods, although "few and far between," have been rendered signal and 
notorious by the measures that characterized them. To the first belongs the enactment of 
*he alien and sedition laws: and to others, the distribution of the public lands, protective 
tariff, bankrupt law, all of which have been obliterated from the statute-book, and only retain 
their places in history as mournful evidences of human error and departed power. The old 
nucleus of this party, which still retained the federal principles, has been as conspicuous in 
its course outside of the annals of Congress as it has been in its legislative career ; for in 
every crisis of the country they have manifested — in their Hartford Convention and blue 
lights upon our invaded shores, in the war of 1812 with England, and in their invocation 
of "bloody hands and hospitable graves" in Mexico, or in some other mode — their want 
of patriotic emotions in the hour of their country's trial. 

Taking our stand at this point, before entering into another comparison which will assume 
darker hues, we may well pause and inquire why we should consent to take the administra- 
tion of this government out of the hands of the democratic party and surrender it to the 
party as just described. Has it not stood by the country in every trial, and sustained her 
credit and honor in every emergency ? Under its guidance, the borders of the Union have been 
made to extend from sea to sea ; golden treasures have repaid the toil of the farmer ; pros- 
perity, peace, and happiness, have entered into the experience and enjoyment of every class 
of our society ; and every citizen is constrained, by the weight of blessings upon him, to ac- 
knowledge that he is indebted for all to the democratr^party, its principles and measures. 
But, if we mean to be true to ourselves, and to the patriotism and wisdom of our sages ; if 
grateful to our fathers, whose blood was freely expended to obtain the blessings we now enjoy 
how much less can we consent to abandon principles and measures which have resulted in 
so glorious a consummation, for the visionary promises of that unsteady and heterogeneous 
opposition which now arrays itself against the spirit of democracy as illustrated by its past 
history ? If from this brief review of the two parties heretofore existing in this country 
our verdict has been that the democratic party was the only national one, and the only one 
worthy of the confidence and support of a free people, what must be our decision, when in 
front we gaze upon the gloomy valley beneath, where is being marshalled in dark array the 
most dangerous and insidious foe that has ever yet attacked the great spirit of democracy 
and essays the ruin of this blessed Union itself? A foe, whose organization was effected 
under the cover of night; whose consultations were made in the recesses, and dens of the 
earth ; whose disgraceful plans were sealed with an impious oath ; whose assaults were 
always made in the dark ; whose promises were delusive ; whose nets were ever set to 
catch the thoughtless, the unwary, and the faithless alike; whose recruiting officers were 
generally selected from unscrupulous and insinuating politicians — from young and inexpe- 
rienced lawyers and fledgling doctors— and whose bounties were always made to suit the 



4 

fancy or the prejudice of its victims. With such appliances, and under such an abandon- 
ment of every honest and holy priaciple, their, ranks were rapidly filled, and at an hour 
■when the democracy were lulled into security by the conscious rectitude of their own course, 
this foe made its onset from the northern hives and spread dismay among the honest portion 
of the country — untaught in the mysteries of the order— and marched in triumph through the 
northern States of the confederacy. They drew a line of distinction between citizens, native 
and foreign-born, other than that made by the constitution, and discriminated between 
those professing one particular religious faith and other denominations. They dissemina- 
ted religious intolerance in its most odious forms ; desecrated the pulpit, and debauched the 
clergy— as far as they could reach them— by their vile purposes and designs. They poi- 
soned the avenues of social intercourse, disturbed the harmoLy of the republic, and weak- 
ened that effection for the Union, and of citizens for each other, without which, Mr. Jefferson 
truly remarked, liberty, and even life itself, would be dreary things. The right of suffrage be- 
ing trammelled by an oath, State pride and State sovereignty were paralized, individual rights 
were assailed, and religious tests instituted, in violation of the constitution, and disorder, 
riot, and bloodshed threatened to uproot the very foundations of government, and of society 
itself. 

In this perilous hour, the democracy, ever true to her instincts and to the cause of human 
rights, came to the rescue, and asserted, with a boldness characteristic of conscious rectitude, 
one of her cherished principles before alluded to— "equal and exact justice to all men, of what- 
ever state or persuasion, religious or political ;" and with this motto upon her banner she went 
forth to meet those modern Philistines upon the plains of the "Old Dominion." She met 
without dismay this mighty host, inflated with their unbroken series of triumphs, and 
arrogant in their fancied power; but their great leader, "the invisible and invincible Sam," 
was laid in the dust by a blow with a pebble from the sling of the David of democracy, and 
his motley troops completely routed. The ground on which the British lion had crouched 
before the power of freemen was appropriately selected for the overthrow of an equally 
dangerous and wil;^ foe, and the character of the forces to accomplish the deed was 
equally propitious. The reliable, firm, and inflexible democracy of A^irginia might safely be 
intrusted with the issues and fortunes of the party throughout the Union. They met the 
enemy, and his defeat was complete. The mighty "Sam"— the father of the know-nothing 
heresy — was shorn of his prestige, and sent back to the land of his nativity, north of the 
Potomac, as unworthy of a grave in the soil which contained the ashes of Washington, Jef- 
ferson, and Madison. Who can now look back to that contest with feelings other than of 
pride and patriotic emotion ? and who can behold the disinterested and gallant bearing of 
the democracy of the country in that struggle without appreciating more highly than he did 
before, its vitality, integrity, and nationality? If it had been actuated by selfish feelings and 
a love of the spoils, as has been ff^en charged by its opponents, what an opportunity was 
presented to form a party that would have been irresistible in its demands for the "loaves 
and fishes 1" But they preferred honor and principle to the flesh pots of Egypt. 

Although the battle with the know-nothings has been thus fought and .won in'its char- 
acter as a national party, yet it still exists as a sectional party ; one wing of which in the 
North retains its former name— the other or southern wing is designated by the high-sound- 
ing title of the " American party." The characteristics of the southern wing of this party 
are— the disfranchisement of all fo'eigners coming to our shores of all political rights, a pro- 
scription of those professing the Roman Catholic religion, and an opposition to the democratic 
party. Thoseof the northern wing, besides such as belong to the southern portion, are— an 
opposition to the institutions the of South, the doctrine of free-soilism, and the restoration of 
the Missouri Compromise line. At the same time, a new party has sprung up in the North, 
wholly sectional in its character, which boldly proclaims an open hostility to the South, and 
a determination to subject her not only to insult and contumely of every kind, hut to deprive 
her of all participation in the territory of the United States, acquired by the common blood 
and treasure of the whole country. 



o 

Hitherto, in the conflict of parties, all have aclcnowledged the constitution to bo the 
supreme law of the land, the sacredness of laws enacted by the constituted authorities, and 
the duty of all to bow to the will of a majority of the people as expressed at the polls ; but 
now the monstrous and awful assertion is made that there is a law higher than the consti~ 
tution, justifying a disregard of those principles and restrictions which interpose opposition 
to their mad design of abolishing African slavery as it exists in the South. At this moment, 
in connexion with the know-nothings of the North, they are attempting to force a Territorj', 
which has recently been organized under a territorial government, preparatory to its 
future admission as a State into the Union, to become a free State — contrary to the 
natural order of things and the voluntary action of such of our fellow-citizens as may 
remove to it with the view of making it their home — by the employment of mercenary gangs 
of lawless adventurers, who are hired by " emigration aid societies," established under 
the revolutionary sanction of one of the States of this Union, and are sent to that Terri- 
tory armed with rifles instead of Bibles. The authority of the legislature of that Territory, 
and of the laws enacted for the government of the same, has been openly resisted, and treason- 
able counterplots have been concocted in the shape of a pretended State constitution, the 
election of a governor and other State and federal officers, all intended to array one 
portion of the citizens in direct conflict and hostility with another, and in opposition to the 
regular territorial government established by the authority of Congress. The consequence has 
been, as was foreseen, crime of all kinds, arson, murder, theft, robbery, treason, and civil war, 
within the borders of that ill-fated Territory ; whilst in the Congress of the United States 
the representatives of this new party, who, with the know-nothings, have a majority in the 
House of Representatives, are threatening to stop the wheels of government, and, if needs be, 
even a dissolution of the Union, by withholding the necessary appropriations and supplies for 
continuing the ordinary discharge of its duties — legislative, executive, and judicial. 

It is difficult for a sound mind, actuated by honest motives and impelled by patriotism, to 
explain upon any ordinary principle this appaling attitude and frantic course on the part of so 
large a portion of our countrymen. Is it because the rights of the States, or their own indi- 
vidual rights, have been assailed ? Is it that any of the rights and blessings guarantied by 
the constitution to the meanest or humblest citizen are sought to be withheld ? Or is it 
because it is apprehended that our political system will prove inadequte to the consummation 
of the problem of our political and social prosperity and existence? No. None of these 
legitimate springs of human action seem to actuate them ; but it is to get up a crusade 
against the southern portion of the confederacy for the purpose of liberating the African from 
the bond of slavery as it there exists, under the fanatical spirit of which they are determined 
to stifle the voice of reason and of truth, to reject the favors of Heaven, and to trample under 
foot all that is sacred and good among men. The red republicans of France, under the 
influence of a fire in their blood and a fever in their brain, congregated around a phantom of 
their imagination, and shouted hozannas to liberty; but the truth is, that while they 
imagined they were struggling and contending for liberty, they were only putting forth their 
energies to gratify the worst passions of human nature. Our black republicans are but re-enact- 
ing the same scenes, led on by the same fiendish passions; and with how much propriety and 
emphasis may we exclaim : " Oh ! Liberty, what wrongs are perpetrated in thyname !" 

But how differently thought and acted the fathers of the revolution and the sages who 
framed the constitution ! The question of liberty, in relation to ourselves and to the negro of 
this country, was in the calm and honest days of the republic maturely considered by men of 
■wise heads and good hearts, who would have been the last to inflict a wrong upon any 
class, or withhold from the humblest those rights and privileges that would contribute 
most to the happiness and well-being of the whole. They saw that the institution of African 
slavery had been entailed upon this country by the agency of the mother country while we 
were in a state of colonial dependence ; that the traffic in this species of property was a 
matter of interest and profit to some of our northern States, and that the adoption of a 
compromise between the two sections of the country was the policy dictated by wisdom and 



justice. Accordingly, tlie constitution provided that after a certain period the traffic in 
African negroes should cease, and that thi^oughout all time the South should be protected 
in their rights of property thus acquired. 'They saw that every portion of the confederacy 
was equally involved in the question ; and that \if slavery was an evil, it should only be left 
to an all-wise and overruling Providence, to be disposed of, as to time and mode, as His good- 
ness might contrive. They saw the unmistakable evidences of difference between the two 
races — the manifest superiority of the one, and the inferiority of the other — and their solici- 
tude was directed to the formation of a constitutional government suited to the wants and 
capacities of the white man, leaving the negro to the care and control of a master who would 
himself be controlled by the instincts of self-interest, as well as by the influences of society, of 
religion, and humanity. They had already seen that the condition of the southern slave 
presented to the world a higher development of moral culture and Christian civilization than 
had been furnished by any previous condition of the sable son's of Africa. They had traced 
him back through the annals of more than three thousand years of authentic history, and had 
found that throughout the length of that whole period he had in his own native wilds made 
no advancing step beyond that of the loathsome cannibal feasting upon the blood of his own 
slaughtered brethren; that emancipation, in every instance, had opened the flood-gate of 
naisery and vice; that oppression, and want, and degradation had hurried him from a 
wretched existence, or left him to lament the wrongs and evils inflicted upon him by the efforts 
of a false love and misguided benevolence. 

It was to have been hoped that the adjustment of this question by a tribunal so wise, so 
august, and so eminently entitled to the respect and veneration of mankind, would have been 
acquiesced in by their posterity, and have received the lasting confidence of every lover of 
American history and American liberty. And it presents a melancholy reflection to the true 
patriot to find that a portion of our fellow-citizens of the North will not yield their assent to 
the verdict of such men, especially as the matter about which they give themselves so much 
concern, and attempt to involve the country in so much turmoil and danger, is entirely 
beyond the limits of their own States, and consequently beyond their jurisdiction. It is also 
a matter of surprise, that in manifesting their disregard of the lights of the States in which 
this institution exists, they do not see that they are inflicting a suicidal blow upon their 
own sovereignty in matters as vital to them as slavery is to the States they assail ; and, that 
instead of listening to the voice of reason, and to the counsels of good men, attached to the 
constitution of the country, designing leaders are permitted to appeal to the prejudices of 
the ignorant and unsuspecting portions of their fellow-citizens, to make a clamor for some 
higher law than that contained in the charter of our liberties, and to justify any atrocity 
which the occasion may suggest to prevent southern men from obtaining their rights under 
the constitution. Under the influence of such teachings, we have seen, in the execution of a 
law, known as the fugitive-slave law, enacted by an early Congress, and bearing the signa- 
ture and approval of Washington, men shot down in the performance of their duty in the 
court-room, the judges threatened with violence if they dare to execute it, and penal enact- 
ments prescribed against sworn officers for issuing or executing process under it. 

But these outrages upon private rights, guarantied by the constitution and laws, do not 
satisfy these infuriated men, who seem determined to push insult and injury to the last ex- 
tremity — even to that of severing the ligament that unites us as a people ; for, when they 
have accomplished all that can be done by force — that instrument of despotism — they fall 
back upon one of the leading principles of the old federal party, and ask Congress to assume 
a power not delegated to them, and to discriminate between the rights of the slaveholding 
and the non-slaveholding citizens in the Territories ; and if this central domination is refused 
and Congress, in the exercise of its legitimate powers, leave the people, (as it has done in the 
Nebraska-Kansas act,) who may choose to remove to a Territory from any section of the 
country, free to say, when they form their constitution for admission into the Union, whether 
or not they will have slaves in the new State, or any other species of property, even though 
it be the ordinary nuisance in the shape of a clock pedler, they not only exhibit their disposi- 



tion to commit a gross outrage upon common jus'cice, but strike at that great principle re*^ 
cognised by the democratic party, that of the capacity of the people for self-government, and 
assume the prerogative of the tyrant, that of knowing the wants of the people, and of judging 
of their interests, better than the people themsr-lves. 

Another expedient adopted by the opponents of democracy is an affectation of unbounded 
love for compromises. They affect to attribute all the outrages that have been committed 
in regard to the admission of Nebraska and Kansas as Territories to the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, embraced by that act, which excluded the citizens of one-half of the States of this 
Union from all the territory north of the southern line of Virginia, and pretend to feel a holy 
reverence for that line, when, in truth, they bitterly abused it from the day of its adoption to 
that of its repeal, and refused to extend it to the shores of the Pacific when our government 
acquired new territory extending to that ocean. And even now, do they not doggedly refuse 
the adoption of a bill prepared by the Senate of the United States for the admission of 
Kansas— as a compromise — disregarding the number of the population, and seeking only a 
pacification of the troubles there prevailing, withdrawing all external force, guarantying to 
the bona fide settlers of the Territory the freedom of the ballot-box and protection in all the 
rights of American citizens. But that is not their desire. If their love of compromises were 
sincere, they would find compromises enough in the constitution to absorb their affections, 
and which, if regarded, would restore peace and harmonyto the distracted state of the country. 
Sectional strife, war upon the South and her institutions, commotion, and discord— the ele- 
ments which all traitors to their country seek as the means of personal aggrandizement— are 
the objects which the leaders of the present opposition are striving to effect. Every measure 
of the present administration— every act of any ofiicer of the government— every incident in 
private life which can be used for effecting a brief political capital— is readily seized upon by 
the senators and members of the House of Representatives, and by misrepresentation, false- 
hood, and abuse upon southern men and southern institutions, used as the means of fanning 
the flame of rebellion and provoking hostile collisions between sections and individuals; and 
when, on a recent occasion, a gentleman of South Carolina, and a member of the House, took 
upon himself the duty of chastising a leading Massachusetts senator in this unholy work for 
a gEOSS libel upon his State and upon his venerable relative— also a senator and absent at the 
time— by the sound application of a gutta-percha cane, they suddenly became awfully shocked 
at this manifestation of a gentleman's feelings; and although a matter of a personal character 
entirely, they immediately sought to convert it into an occasion for "howls and shrieks" in 
favor of "free Kansas." Indeed, no concessions seem to satisfy their mad designs of producing 
a dissolution of this confederacy, and of blighting the fond hopes entertained by every patriot 
as to the future grandeur and power of this republic. 

The course of the abolitionists is as mysterious as it is unjust and vexatious. The most 
superfi *ial observer cannot fail to see, that if they let agitation subside, and obey the injunctions 
of the constitution and the laws, the occupations and pursuits of every section of the Union 
would contribute to the wealth and growth of each, and that we would again be a happy 
and united people ; but, instead of pursuing this plain and obvious course, they madly rush 
upon one which puts in jeopardy the issues of prosperity or adversity to twenty-five millions 
of freemen, and against which reason and justice and their own self-interests strongly warn 
them. Where shall we look for a rational solution of such an exhibition of folly and crime ? 
It cannot be that mere sympathy for the African race prompts to this mysterious action ; for 
if it was that, they would certainly extend their philanthropy to the native race, now buried 
in barbarism, or else throw their fostering care around the emancipated negroes of an adjacent 
island whose declining condition is conclusive evidence that the protection and guidance of 
the Anglo-Saxon are indispensable to their well-being and existence. Nor yet, can we 
construe their action as the result of a hatred to our institutions ; for although in their phrensy 
Bome of their leaders denounce the institution of slavery as an enormous ^n, and its protection 
under the constitution as a "covenant with hell," yet too many of them have not descended to 
the third generation from noble sires and patriots, whose blood must flow too freely in their 



\ 



8 



reins to countenance such a degeneracy. Discarding, then, all suppositions of this kind, 
and looking to the varied, yet natural, influences upon the conduct of men, may we not find 
it in a more subtile agent than any which have been mentioned? Our institutions and our un- 
paralleled progress and power are regarded as dangerous and inimical to the other powers 
of the earth, and especially to England; and in contemplating the salutary influence in dis- 
enthralling the dowA-trodden millions of those countries, engendered by the institutions of 
this, and in releasing the grasp of hereditary rulers in every part of the globe, may we not 
trace it to the probable and natural cause that there are still Arnolds among us who would 
sell their influence to foreign gold, and barter away the great principle ©f freedom to man for 
the sordid aggrandizement of individual self? England is too prudent to attempt our sub- 
jugation while we are united; and to counteract our onward career, she is compelled to resort 
to some insidious means of accomplishing that which her army and navy can never 
achieve by an open and manly attack. But shall we thus be sold by demagogues and design- 
ing men ? Heaven forbid it. Freemen forbid it. 

In presenting a brief history of the crying evils with which we are surrounded, and of 
the imminent dangers which threaten the prosperity and perpetuity of our glorious institu- 
tions, the power of the democratic party is invoked to the assertion of our rights as guar- 
antied by the constitution of our country to curwhole race ; and to them we must look for 
the preservation of a Union which p.tients, in the contemplation of the future, a condition 
of national grandeur and sublimity which the palmiest days of the world have never yet 
furnished, and whose meridian splendor can now only be imagined by the light which the 
fitful' gleams of an early dawn occasionally reveal. It is natural that to this point 
we should have looked to the conservative influences of democratic principle?, to their pecu- 
liar construction of the constitution in regard to the powers of the federal government, to the 
recognition of the capacity of our people for self-government, and of their constituting the 
only true and legitimate source of power, as our chief reliance for safety and security in the 
present crisis. But in the perilous and desperate conflict in which the country is involved 
with fanatical heresies of all kinds ; and when unprincipled men — in their rejection of faith in 
the Bible, in their infidelity of every good and sacred principle, of the very elements upon 
which Christian civilization is based, of nature and nature's God— are driven by phrensied 
and frantic determination to hazard all that is solid and conservative for the wild and 
desperate game of effecting negro emancipation and negro equality with the white man, can 
we not look, also, to the honest, Union-loving members of the old whig party to lend their 
aid to their country's honor and salvation in this hour of dread and dire calamity ? They 
cannot turn a deaf ear to their country's call without disregarding the bright examples fur- 
nished by their former, as well as by many of their present leaders, and especially the esg^ple 
of him who now reposes at Ashland, whose voice, although opposed to the democratic party, 
was often heard in clarion notes on the side of his country, whenever her institutions were 
assailed, or the perpetuity of the Union endangered. And our own brother democrats, who 
were thoughtlessly betrayed into an abandonment of their principles by the deceitful wiles of 
a secret, oath-bound party— may we not call upon them, too ? If they fail to come up to the 
rescue, will they not be dead to the lessons of the venerated Jefferson and Jackson, who told 
them, if they ever wandered from the principles of democracy in moments of error or of alarm, 
to hasten to retrace their steps, and to regain the road which leads to peace, libertv, and 
safety ? 

Come, then, fellow-citizens of the Old Dominion, one and all, and let us look to this 
matter with honest hearts, and determine dispassionately, as freemen and as patriots, whether 
James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge, with the doctrines of Jefferson, Madison, and 
Jackson, shall prevail, or whether Millard Fillmore, with free-soilism and know-nothingism, 
or Fremont and black republicanism, shall tarnish your country's glory, or involve it ia 
ruin ! 



THE GREAT FRAUD 

C 

V UPON 

THE PUBLIC CREDULITY 



ORGANIZATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 



THE RUINS OF THE ''WHia PARTY," 



AN ADDRESS TO THE OLD-LINE WHIGS OF THE UNION. 



WASHINGTOX: 
FEINTED AT THE UNION OFFICE. 

1856. " 



E^^^ 

f- ^y^ 






«& 



THE DUTY OF THE WHIGS TO THE AMERICAN UNION. 



Human society could not long exist without government ; the strong 
would crush out the weak, the ignorant would fall victims to the wise, 
and the whole would be destroyed by the conflict of its parts. 

In the present condition of human nature, laws, and their correspond- 
ing appendages, are not only a blessing, for which man should be 
thankful, but a necessity,^ without which he could not live at all. 

It is not a good argument against the propriety of law, and in favor 
of anarchy, that, under every form of government, and in the compli- 
cated working of eveiy system of laws, injustice may be done to a 
larger or smaller portion of the community. This has always been 
the case, and most likely always will be, until angels instead of men 
dispense the laws. 

There can be no condition of society so perfect, or the administra- 
tion of its laws so impartial, but that some classes of the people will 
have apparent grounds of complaint against the unequal burdens which 
seem to rest upon them. This complaint will always be directed 
af^ainst the ruling power as the nearest ijcrceivahic cause, whilst thereat 
cause, however, is not necessaril}- in the government, but results from 
the frail and corrupted condition of the nature of man himself, both the 
governors and the governed, and is quite as visible in all of the other 
relations of life as in the civil government. 

The republican has this eminent superiority over every other form of 
government — that if the people are badly governed, unjustly dealt with, 
or severely oppressed, they feel that it has been the result of their own 
choice, and that the evil to be corrected is within their own power. 
The form of government under which we live has much to do with 
the laws which are made to sustain it, with the administration which 
executes it, and the happiness, peace, and prosperity which the people 
enjoy under it. But the security of the citizen under any form of gov- 
ernment is dependent entirely upon the supremacy of clearly defined, 
well understood, and unquestionably just laws, impartially administered 
in the spirit of charit}^ 

In regard to civil government, as to all other subjects, differences of 
opinion must exist upon all questions where the truth is not clearly self- 
evident, of which character there are but few truths. This difference 
of opinion must induce a corresponding difference of action. Upon 
questions of policy or government, it of necessity arrays men into par- 
ties. In monarchical governments this difference of opinion finds its 
way to tlie public mind through literary journals, romances, stage and 
plays, among the more intelligent, and in songs and proverbs among 
the laboring classes. In republics, where the government "emanates 
from the free expression of the will, and the voluntary action of tWe 
people, party is its natural offspring. Such parties have ahva3's existed ; 
such parties we now have ; and to their mutual vigilance we will always 



be indebted for the efficiency and purity of our present political 
system. If we would have these parties efficient, they must be pre- 
served in purity ; and they can be kept pure only by an unffinching 
adhei^ence to well-settled principles. 

A real statesman never can be governed by mere party. Party may 
very properly be used as the machinery by which principles do their 
work. Openly conducted, and justly administered, party organizations 
are essential to the safety and purity of our government itself, if party 
be made subservient to principle. But where 2)ri7icij)les are made sub- 
servient to party considerations or party success, civil government has 
no guaranty for either its protection or its perpetuity. The true doc- 
trine of pure republicanism is this : make party your servant ; to be 
corrected when wrong; to be cherished when right; to be abandoned 
when it becomes either corrupt or incorrigible. Let principle be your 
master — your supreme ruler. Pxirties are the creatures of circum- 
stances. They grow up hastily — are short lived ; they serve the pur- 
poses of government, or become the engines of corruption. They then 
die out, and leave not so much as a shadow or a ghost behind them to 
fill up their place, or mark the remembrance of their being. 

■ Principles live forever. Justice, truth, and purity are co-eval and 
cp-eternal with God himself; in every climate, under every form of 
government, among all nations of the earth, these great principles have 
been cardinal. For the time being, they may have been shrouded in 
darkness, embarrassed by the interference of unwise government, but 
they have never been crushed out. They have always found some 
;^lace, though obscure it may have been, to vindicate their supremacy 
and assert their eternity. Good men, in power, have been governed by 
these principles ; bad men, in suffering, have appealed to them, not in 
vain, for protection and redress. All men give assent to them, though 
they may disregard their restrictions or neglect their injunctions. 

; Political parties have no right to plead exemption from the moral 
obligations of these principles — this is always true ; but it comes with 
greater force at a time when all parties are dissolving ; when old and 
well-established and great truths are abandoned ; when factions and 
cliques and secret lodges are banding together f()r purposes ot" political 
power, and personal emolument, defiant of national happiness, and 
reckless of the national existence. Just such times are now upon the 
country. Old party lines have been obhterated ; entirely new party 
organizations are being formed all over the country, based upon entirely 
new political doctrines, and inviting the people to issues no less peril- 
ous than extraordinary. One section of the Union is arrayed against 
the other ; one great branch of the Christian church is making political 
war upon the other ; local interests and local prejudices are put in con- 
flict with national law and the administration of the general government. 
Never since the Declaration of our Independence has the public mind 
been so unsettled, and the peace of the country so imperilled as it now 
is. 

As citizens of a common country, and believers in a common Chris- 
tian faith, it is a duty we owe to the great cause of civilization over the 
whole earth, which is dependent to a great extent upon the success of 



our government, and the stability of our institutions ; a duty we owe 
to our posterity who will prosper for ages under our hberal institutions 
transmitted to them, or perish in the general wreck of this free govern- 
ment ; a duty we owe to God, who hath made the prosperity of all 
government dependent upon the strict justice of its rulers, and the quiet 
submission of the people to the laws of the country, to carefully take 
our steps in the determination of our destiny as a government, and our 
happiness as a people. 

In such contusion as now surrounds us, we can mark out for our- 
selves no safe pathway of duty, until we carefully examine the starting- 
point of our political faith, and carefully consider what ive ought to be, 
and as calmly reflect upon what we are. 

In the year 1852, we were at peace with the whole world ; our ships 
were laden with the riches of the land, and carried food and raiment 
to every portion of the habitable globe ; our fields were rich with the 
fruits of a bounteous harvest; our people were employed, and the whole 
country presented a prosperity and happiness without a precedent or 
parallel in our history ; benevolent societies were forming in every 
part of the country for the relief of distress and the amelioration of the 
wants and sufferings of the benighted people of foreign lands ; our 
churches were crowded with penitent sinners and devoted Christians, 
and a general revival of religion was spreading throughout the nation ; 
agricultural fairs were forming for the development of the resources 
ot our wealth ; railroad companies were organizing for the facilitation 
of our internal commerce ; gold commenced to be poured in from Cali- 
fornia ; myriads of population were emigrating to the western titates : 
the wages of labor were highly remunerative, and our people were 
profitably employed and contented. So little did the country feel con- 
cerned for our political welfare, and so confident were the people of 
our continued peace, that both political parties adopted substantially 
a common platform. 

The Whig platform of 1852 is undoubtedly the most candid, clear, 
and unquestionable exposition of the sentiments, and feelings, and doc- 
trines of that party which has ever been given to the country. 

THE WHIG PLATFORM OF 1852. 

"The Whigs of the United States, in convention assembled, firmly adhering to the great 
conservative republican principle by which they are control ed and governed, and now, as ever, 
relying upon the intelligence of the American people, with an abiding c.'uifidepce in their capa- 
city for self-government, and their contmued devotion to ihe Constitution and the Union, do 
proclaim the f dlowing as the political sentiments and determination, fo the establishment and 
maiitcnance of whicin their nat'onal organization, as a p«rty, is effected : 

" i. That the government of the United Siatcs is of a limiteo character, and it is confined to 
the fxerci.*e of powers expressly sraated by the Constitution, and such as may be necessary 
and pro, ler for carrying the granted powers into full execution; and that all powers not thua 
granted or necessarily implied are expressly reserved to the States respectively, and to the 
people. 

"2 That the State governmerts should be held secure in their reserved rights, and the gen- 
eral governnent sustained in its con.-^titutional powers, and the Union should be revered and 
watched over as the palladium of our liberties. 

" .3. Thar, while struggling freedom everywhere enlists the warmest sympathy of the Whig 
party, we still adhere to the doctrines of the Father of his Country, as announced in his Fare- 
well Address of keeping- ourselves free from all entangling pUionces w th foreign countries, and 
of nevf r quitting our own to stand upon foreign ground ; that our mission as a Repiublic is not 
to propagate our opinions, or impose on other countries our form of government by artifice 



er force, but to teach by example, and show by our success, moderation, and justice, tlr9 
blessinga of self-government, and the advantages of free institutions. 

"4. That where the people make and control the government they should obey its Consti- 
tution, laws, and treaties, as they would retain their self-respect, and the respect which they 
claim and will enforce from foreign powers. 

"5. That the government should be conducted upon principles of the strictest economy, and 
that revenue sufficient for the expenses of its economical administration in time of peace ought 
to be mainly derived from a duty on imports, and not from direct taxes ; and, in levying such 
duties, sound policy requires a just discrimination, whereby suitable encouragement may be 
afforded to American industry, equally to classes, and to all portions of the country. 

" 6 That the Constitution vests in Congress the power to open and repair harbors, and re- 
move obstructions from navigable rivers ; and it is expedient that Congress should exercise 
that pov/er whenever such improvements are necessary for the common defence, or for the pro- 
tection and facility of commerce with foreign nations or among the States — such improvements 
in every instance being national and general in their character. 

" 7. That the Federal and State governments are parts of one sy^tcm, alike necessajry for the 
common prosperity, peace, and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitaal, 
and immovable attachment. Respect for the authority of each, and the acquiescence in just 
constitutional meaauree of each, are duties required by the plainest considerations of national, 
of State, and of individual welfare. 

" 8. That the series of acts of the thirty- first Congress, the act known as the fugitive slave 
law included, are received and acquiesced in by the Whig patty of the United States as a settle- 
ment, in principle end substonc*, of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace, 
an(?, 80 far as they are concerted, we will maintain them, and insist upon their enforcement 
until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against 
the evasion of the laws on the one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other, not impair- 
ing their present efficiency ; and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus settled 
88 dangerous to our peace, and will discountenance all eff. rts to continue or renew such agita- 
tion, whenever, wherever, or however, the attempt may be made ; and we will maintain this 
system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party, and the integrity of the Union." 

The preamble declares the "abiding confidence" of the Whig party 
'■■in the capacity of the people to govern themselves." 

The first resolution asserts the limited character of the powers of 
"the government of the United States." 

The second resolution grows legitimately out of the first, and affirms 
"the doctrines of State sovereignty." 

The third resolution is an expression of sympathy with the oppressed 
everywhere, upon the one hand, and, upon the other hand, an unyield- 
ing determination to adhere to the policy of Washington — to interfere 
v/ith none of the revolutions, nor participate in the civil wars of other 
nations. 

The fourth resolution is a pledge to the supremacy of the constitu- 
tion and law in our own land, and the observance, in good faith, of treaties 
made with tbreign powers. 

The fifth resolution recommends a revenue tariff, which will give 
protection equally to the industry of every section of the Union. 

The sixth resolution is an elimination of Congressional power, in the 
construction of internal improvements, to the specified grants of the 
constitution itself. 

The seventh resolution is an affirmation of that State comity which, 
if exercised, will perpetuate us as one people for ages to come ; but 
Without which we can have no lasting existence as a confederated 
republic, and remain what wc now are — E Fiuribiis Umim, to the glory 
of civil liberty, and the terror of tyrants. 

The eighth resolution is a covenant to leavx undisturbed the question 
of slaver}^ and the social law" of tiie country, allowing each section to 
form its own judgment, to pursue its own course, and determine its own 
;iction in relation to its own police laws and its own domestic institu- 
tions. 



The foref^oing resolutions are presented in detail and noted to prove 
ihat there is not one single element of the Republican party dcducihle 
or inferrible from, or in anywise affiliated with, the doctrines of the old 

Whiff party. 

DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM. 

^* Rtseli-ed, That the American democracy place t'neir trust in the intelligence, the patriotism 
and the discrimitiaiin? justice of the Ainerican people. 

"Rvsolved, That we regard this at* a distinctive fe-dture of ourcree;!, which we are proud to 
maintain before the woild as a great element in a form of government springing from and up- 
held by a nopuiar will ; and we contrast it with the creed and practice of federalism, under 
whatever name or form, which seeks to palsy the vote of the conaituent, and which conceiveg 
no imposture too mons'rous for the popular credulity. . 

''Resolved, therefore, That, entertaining these views, the Democratic party of the Union, 
through their delegates, ossemb'ed in a general convention of the States, convening together in 
a spirit of concord, of devotion to the doctrines and faith of a free representative government, 
and appealing to their fellow-citizens for the rectitude of tlieir intentions, renew and re-asser". 
before the American p°ople the declaration of principles avowed by them, when on former 
occasions, in general conventinn, they presented their candidates fir the popular suffrages. 

" 1. That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitu- 
tion, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the depart- 
ments and agents of t'le government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise 
doubtful constitutional powers. 

"2. That the constitution does not confer upon the general government the power to com- 
mence and carry on a general system of internal iinprovements. 

"3. That the constituti.-.n does not confer authority upon the federal gove'nment, directly or 
indirectly, to assume the debts of the several States, contracted for local internal improve- 
ments, or other State purposes ; nor would such assumption be jjst or expedient. 

" 4. That justice and sound policy forbid the federal governmv<;nt to fo,~!ter one branch of in- 
dustry to tne detriment of any other, or to cherish the interests of one portion to the injury of 
another portion of our common coaniry ; th*t every citizen and every section of the country 
has a ridit to demard and in^iist upi-m aii equality of riiihts and privilege--, and a complete and 
ample protection of persons and property from domes.ic violence and foreign aigression. 

'* 5. That it is the duty of every branch of the government to enforce and practise th? most 
rigid economy in conducting our public atiairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raided 
than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government, and for the gradual but 
certain extinction of the public debt. _ i. • • 

" G. That Congress has no power to charter a national bank ; that we believe such an insti- 
tution one of deadly hostility to the b(st interest of our country, dangerous to our republican 
jnatitutions and the iiteriies of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country 
within the control of a concentrated money power, and above the laws and will ot the people ; 
and that the i-esults of democratic legislation, in this and all other financial measures upon 
which issues have be-;!! made between the two political |)arties of the country, have demon- 
strated to practical men of all par ies their soundness, safety, and utility in all business pur- 
euits. 

"7. That the separation of the moneys of the government from ail banking institutions la 
indispensable for the safety of the finds of the ^overnmsnt, and the rights of the people. 

"8. That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the De.daration of Independence, 
and sanctioned in the constitution, which m.ikes ours the land of liberty and the asvlum of 
the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles of the democratic faith'; and 
every attempt to abridge the privilege of becoming citizens and o«neis of soil amongst us 
ought to be resisted with the same spiiil which s^vept the alien and sedition laws from our 
statute-book. 

"9. That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the do- 
mestic institutions of the several States, and that all such States are the sole and proper judges 
of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constiuitron ; tnat aM 
efforts of the' Aboliiionibts, or others, made to induce Congress »o interfere ^wiih quratiors of 
slavery, or to take inci|iient steps in relation thereto, are caLulated to Wad to the most alarmitjg 
and dangerous consequences ; and that all such efforts have an im^vitaale tendency to_ diaiinish 
the happines-! of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and 
ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our j olitical institutions." 

This was the Democratic platform in the year 1S52, differing in no 
cardinal principle or essential point from the one adopted by the Whig 
party. On these piatforms the contest went to the people ; to this point 
was the political controversy of the country narrowed down, and upon 
these issues did the contest end. After an honorable conflict of twenty 
years, the Democratic party gained a final victory. 



8 

Though defeated by an overwhelming majority, the Whig party mag' 
nanimously acquiesced in the election of President Pierce, and, by 
unanimous consent, agreed to present no factious opposition to his 
adminisiration. 

This election settled all the great questions of disputed national 
pohcy, and these two platforms formed the basis of the prospective 
course of both political parties. 

In the mean time, a new and entirely different political organization 
had been quietly commenced, and incidentally alluded to by the 
editor of the New York Tribune. For the la>t twenty years, the politi- 
cal principles of this new organization, in another form and by another 
name, were thoroughly discusseti, first in the New Yorker, afterwards 
in the Tribune, and finally by all of its satellites in every part of the 
northern States. 

Up to the year 1852, for the purposes of preserving his poHlical 
influence, and obtaining numerical strength in a final rupture of the 
Whig party which he anticipated, Hon. Horace Greeley announced 
through the Tribune that he would support the nominees of the Whig 
party, but would spit upon the platform, notwithstanding the princi- 
ples of which the Whig candidates for President and Vice President 
had sacredly bound themselves to maintain. In other words, he vol- 
unteered his frieneship to ruin the party. No sooner had he accom- 
plished his object, than he publicly announced the death of the Whig 
party. 

Until now, the proper time had never presented itself for the prac- 
tical adoption of his long-cherished social principles. He commenced 
the inauguration of his new party, by proposing moral questions for 
legislative action, which it had been the constitutional policy and 
determined purpose of our government forever to exclude from the 
arena of legislation. 

In the early settlement of this country, our ancestors brought with 
them the established religion of their native land to their respective 
colonies. Religious institutions were supported by a direct tax, and 
ultimately, in some of the colonies, the right of opinion, the freedom of 
speech, and the liberty of conscience were entirely compromitted. 
This was arlarmingly true of some of the New England provinces. 

In the formation of the constitution of the United States, our fathers 
put all questions of religious duty upon their true basis — upon man's 
direct personal responsibility to God ; whilst the government offered 
perfect security to the life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness of the citizen. It very properly committed the reformation of the 
world, and the cultivation of the graces of the heart, to the voluntary 
action of the people, under the moral teachings of Christ and his 
Apostles. 

Those early proscriptions had thrown a gloom over the self denying 
character, and otherwise chivalric and brilhant history of our ancestors; 
The framers of the constitution sought to prevent their recurrence by a 
special provision, that there should be no religious test required either 
as a condition of citizenship, or qualification f()r office. These great re- 
ligious questions have never been introduced anywhere into the councils 



9 

of civil government, without inducing civil war. They have uniformly 
sapped the foundations of civil liberty wherever they have been raised. 
But just such questions as these were proposed one by one for legisla- 
tive action; they were intended ultimately to form the basis of a great 
party. 

In different States of the Union, these questions were urged by the 
press which was under the control of the Tribune. The editor of the 
Tribune was in early life an avowed socialist, a follower of Fourrier. 
He tilked, and wrute, and dreamed of an earthly millennium, which 
should be consummated by the advent of social reform. For years he 
made his press the lever-power of that system of reform. He pictured 
a beau ideal government, and inculcated notions of French liberty 
and revolution of wnich this country is having just now quite enough. 
Others claim the paternity of this new social party, for such it is. 
But the editor of the New York Tribune is the father of the whole 
movement ; for years it has been the nursling of his paper. Its varied 
forms, insinuating power, and prospective success, are entirely depend- 
ent upon his superior tact and thorough control of the public passion 
and intimate acquaintance with human character. If this party 
succeeds, its success will be monumental of the immortality of Horace 
Greeley ; if it fdls, Horac3 Greeley will live in history as its bold and 
ingenious architect, whilst all its elements, with its minor workers, will 
be buried in the rubbish of its ruins. 

The initiatory step in this org-mization was an appeal to the moral 
sentiment of the country to correct its immoralities by positive legisla- 
tion. The first great principle of morality brought before the public 
for its political action was — 

THE CAUSE OF TEMPERAiXCE. 

For more than a quarter of a century the people of the United States 
have been using every legitimate nioral means for the reformation 
ot" intemperate men, w^ho drank up their piivate fortunes, diseased 
their physical system, and ruined their families. To more effectually 
accomplish their purpose, they fbrm.ed benevolent sociefties for the re^- 
formatioii of the drunkard, and the relief of his taraiiy. This good 
work extruded over the whole country, and became a strong feature of 
the moral sentiment of the land. Nearlv every public man became a 
member of the temperance society — the work was universally ap- 
proved. The pulpit seni forth its plea ; the minister of Christ wept over 
the victims of drunkenness, and appealed to them by prayers, and 
tears, and exhortations. Masonic lodges, Odd-Fell iws' encampmentst, 
and rural neighborhoods were converted into temjierance societies, and 
brought every conceivable influence to bear upon ihe drunkard and 
cure his infirmity. The moral standard of the country was elevated 
until it became a reproach to drink, or to be found in drinking-housea. 
The jubilee of sobriety was dawning upon the country, and the moral 
power of the Christian faith was becoming omnipotent. Surh was the 
state of the country, and such the condition of the public mind, before 
the inauguration of this new party. Its leaders knew how strong • 
hold temperance had upon the popular feeling of the purest classes of 



10 

society, and determined to direct that feeling as so much capital for 
their own political purposes. The}' proposed the thorough organization 
of the temperance forces in every neighborhood all over the v/hole 
country, with passwords, and grips, and countersigns, and songs, and 
festivals, and other extraordinary demonstrations. Upon the part of 
the people this was all done in good faith to arrest the evil of drunk- 
enness. Upon the part of the y^oliticians it was intended as but initia- 
tory to ulterior and entirely different purposes. It was not long after 
these organizations were first instituted, that superannuated politicians, 
who had followed the fortunes of every political party, were found di- 
recting them. The " Sons of Temperaa'ce," " Good Templars," 
" Rechabites," and " Good Samaritans," were all lead by some zeal- 
ous ex-member of the legislature, or other political aspirant, who, with 
wonderful self-denial, had abandoned their old political associations, 
and, with extraordinary devotion to their new moral faith, spent night 
and day in the organization of the various temperance orders. Tem- 
perance was now to assume a new position under the lead, of these con- 
verted politicians. They cared not so much for the reforujation of 
drunkards, as for the destruction of all dram-shops and still-houses. 
They discarded every manner of moral suasion as entirely inefficient. 
There was with them no cure for drunkenness, no hope for the drunk- 
ard but in legal suasion ; not that legal suasion which punished drunk- 
enness, and abolished drunken resorts. They counselled a temperance 
legislation which transcended all bounds of the ordinary law-making 
power in a free government. The law of nearh'' every State in the 
Union punished drunkenness and its consequent crimes. But they in- 
sisted upon the destruction of all liquors, and the alisolute prohibition 
of all liquor-making, upon the same principle that yuu would cut out 
every man's tongue to prevent slander, or cut off every man's hand to 
prevent murder or theft. 

In this wild excitement the sacred cause of Christianity and temper- 
ance, its purest virtue, were illegitimately dragged into the political 
arena. The true friends of sobriety were nobly working for this great 
reform in good faith, whilst these political reformers were turning the 
various tempejj^nce orders into political caucuses, in which they nomi- 
nated candidates for civil office, and plans were laid for the control of 
elections. In thus making these orders the adjuncts of a political party, 
hundreds were seduced firom their old party affinities, and abandoned 
entirely their party connexions. 

Temperance reform was the ostensible object of this movement. 
The real object was the acquisition of political power, by assuming 
control over the popular feeling. 

Strict and searching laws against drunkenness have stood^ upon the 
statute-book of every Stale in the Union, and Congress has made 
ijevere police laws against drunkenness, and wliere it has been found 
necessary lor the preservation of the peace of society, has made the 
liquor traffic highly penal. In some of the States grog-shops were de- 
clared a nuisance, and indictable as such, by positive law. It was 
generally conceded that everything which law could profitably do had 
been already done. But with the reformers tiiere were two insepara- 



11 

ble objections to the existing laws. The first tjbjectioii was tliis : that 
those laws had been made under the direction and auspices of the old 
parties, and of course could create no political capital for this new or- 
ganization. The second ol)jection was a cardinal one of great force. 

Under the existing law there was no patronage to dispense ; whilst, 
under the contemplated legislation, there were to be county agen- 
cies, search warrants, and neighborho£»d spies. Liquor-selling would 
now be legal, and honorably conducted under the auspices of total 
abstinence. Constables, young village lawyers, would rind abun- 
dant employ in enforcing temperance laws and quelhng mobs. li 
was well known that this would invite resistance to the law itself 
upon the part of the liquor dealers. Then would follow the destruction 
of their propert}-, and the arrest of the offenders. It was well calcu- 
lated that all these feuds and broils would generate a perpetual excite- 
ment, and secure the aid of the moral force of the country in building 
up a party for entirely irrelevant political purposes. This was the ba- 
sis of their action upon the temperance question, and such were the 
means brought to bear to make it a powerful auxiliary of this poHtical 
part3% Thej' inflamed the fanaticism of the people until their legisla- 
tive demands knew no bounds. Even before the passage of the law 
could be effected, mobs were I'aisedto tear down houses and pour out 
liquors, to frustrate the real objects of the temperance movement, 
and make it subservient to their ambitions. In the passage f)f the law 
an inquisitorial system was adopted which contravened all the well-es- 
tablished principles of the right of property and private judgment. 
They assumed supreme authority over the appetites and the business of 
private men. 

Like every other unconstitutional assumption of legislative power, 
these laws have produced a fearful reaction of the public mind, and 
such is now the state of indignation against this untimely and merce- 
nary interference, that it will require the mosc watchful and prudent 
supervision and direction of the true temperance men, to preserve the 
temperance cause itself from contempt. 

No sooner had this political conquest been made over the virtues of 
the people by heartless demagogues, than they were found perpetra- 
ting an insult upon the injured enterprise of the temperance reforma- 
tion. 

To medie their perfidy complete, these very same men are celebra- 
ting, with wines and brandy and punch, railroad conventions, New- 
Year festivities, political parties, and private social gatherings. 

It was a great wrong perpetrated upon the public passion to drive 
it to madness, and make a great Christian virtue the pretext for in- 
vading the private rights and family sanctuary with impudent spies 
and pragmatical officials. 

In our sober moments it alarms us that it was ever dreamed of as 
right to send constables into the sideboard and bureau, the bed-cham- 
ber and closet of a quiet Christian family, to know what they ate and 
what they drank. 

"But that was not the only or the most fearful wrong which was done 
to the country : that wrong was remediable ; the people had the re- 
dress in thair ov^^n hands ; they had no difficulty in determining and 



12 

falling back upon their own legitimate rights. But morality was 
stabbed to the heart under a false name, and her life-blood is dripping 
down at her feet. Real temperance men, who regard temperance in 
its true light as the very highest and purest element of Christian char- 
acter, now feel that the cause has been struck down in the prostituted 
name of friendship. The ordinary temperance appeals, though made 
in good faith by good men, are assailed by suspicion and confounded 
with politics ; nor, until the last lingering element of political chica- 
nery has been separated from the cause of temperance, can the lovers 
of sobriety hope again to enter the field in successful contest against 
the wide- spreading vice of drunkenness. The land is filled with drunk- 
enness ; our strong men are swept away b}!" its fires like leaves in a 
burning forest. But so effectually have these political temperance 
men hedged up our pathway, that we dare not now call up the sub- 
ject in sermons or speeches without becoming obnoxious to the charge 
of an illegitimate ioierterence, under the cover of morality, with the 
politics of the country. 

Temperance men committed a folly when they did not repulse these 
political intruders when they first put their unholy feet upon the thresh- 
old of the temperance movement. In the coming campaign the Re- 
publican party vi^ill obey the mandates and follow the course indicated 
by the New York Tribune, their leader. Where the temperance ques- 
tion may be made available, it will be the movement, paramount to 
all others. Where it would hang as a weight upon the success of the 
Repubhcan party, it will be thrown aside as an entirely secondary 
matter, having no connexion whatever with politics. Such has been 
their tactics, and such are the abuses that have been of the temperance 
question by this party. What is now the- condition of temperance in 
the country ; of societies laboring for the reformation of the inebri- 
ate, blessed and loved by every bod v? We have county groceries, 
and hquor agencies, kept by political partisans, who are appointed by 
the dominant political party according to his political complexion, 
without any other regard whatever; and the whole now amounts to 
nothing more nor less than the monopoly of the whiskey business to 
reward partisans ; for it is notorious that whiskey is everywhere gis'-en 
out to all who seek it, with or without a just pretence under the law. 
After the temperance question had been taxed to its utmost capacity 
for the benefit of the party, the editor of the New York Tribune came 
out in a long article, coolly informing the country ihat, though he had 
always been an ardent temperance man, he attached no importance to 
the question of temperance when compared with the great question 
now at issue before the country — the trmmph of the Republican party. 

FOURRIERISM— THE EMANCIPATION AND EQ.UALITY OF THE BLACKS. 

The next element which entered into the organization of this party, 
had its diversified beginnings under the auspices of Garrison, Gerrit 
Smith, Joshua R. Giddings, Thompson, of England, and other mis- 
guided philanthropists, who looked to the ultimate emancipation of the 
slaves, and the political and social equality of all the races; the com- 
mon distribution and enjoyment of the offices, honors, and wealth of so- 



13 

ciety among all men. They painted their republic upon canva?s, and 
presented in a captivating style, upon paper,, their purely itrni^inary 
society ; a condition of society such as has never existed anywhere ; a 
state cf things which has never been promised in the most thorough 
reformation of human nature in this world ; such as was denied to our 
patriarchal fathers, which was beyond the asserted control of the Sa- 
viour himself in his mission among men, and which is in direct contraven- 
tion of the unfulfilled prophecies of Christ and his Apostles for all time 
to come. But such was their hope. Its futility will be examined. 

There is an unspeakable difference between the highest conceivable 
good as it exists in the imagination of the Utopian, and that other prac- 
tical real good as it has descended to us in the history of human gov- 
ernments, and as it develops itself in the existing elements of human 
society. Let us see what is that difference between what is real and 
what is imaginary. I have been taught that the ultimate reward of 
the Christian in his home of Heaven shall be j^cr/f-ct. I can conceive a 
condition of man immortalized, where every sense shall be perfect, 
and every perception will be accurate — where the eye, freed fronj dis- 
ease, shall give to the soul a vision of truth, and beauty, and compre- 
hension, that could correctly, with ineffable pleasure, and at a single 
glance, grasp the architecture and solve the mysteries of the rirma- 
ment — sensitive to all symmetry and impervious to all pain. 1 can 
conceive how the ear, strung to " the concord of sweet sounds," ma}'' 
extract from the voice of the elements all their harmony, and be decif to 
all their discord; the thunders of the last judgment and the convulsions 
of a dying universe would be sweet, like the music of the voice of 
many waters. I can conceive how all the senses may be avenues or 
unmixed pleasure, with health and perfection to guard them against 
the invasions of pain or decay. Nor do my imagnations cease heie. I 
can conceive how the intellectual powers of man may be elevated 
above error and passion, and impurity. I can conceive how the rea- 
son of a perfect mind ma}" be exalted above fallacy or imposition ; how 
the memory might cling to every transpiring event, and treasure it up 
as its own; how imagination, assisted by memory, could foresee with 
certainty truths now shrouded in the distance of time. I can conceive 
how the unclad soul, relieved of the slavish mantle of flesh, wouUI for- 
ever aspire after and assimilate itself to the pure character ot God. 
Nor has it been placed beyond the reach of human conception, for 
it has been addressed to human belief, how the body itself luiiv be 
made incorruptible and immortal, and, like asbestos in the furnace, 
burn in eternal beauty. I can portray to my mind a condition of' so- 
ciety where all are equals and friends, bound together in chains of iiar- 
mony and love as a great family, only subject to the supreme powtr of 
the Great Ruler of all things, elevated far above suffering and sust;>med 
without sympathy, fed by the hand of the Almighty. This is what I 
can imagine, and the joys of Heaven are " more" than man can " con- 
ceive.^^ But it is not beneath the dignity of the philosopher to come down 
from the regions of fancy and ?!!arefully examine the real con dAon of 
society as it now is — as it always must be — m this world. The re. d dif- 
ficulty in the solution of man's earthly wrongs and sufferings is clearly 



14 

and correctly presented by Israel's mightiest king in Holy Writ — '' The 
heart of minis dece'uful above all things and, desperately icickedy 

Let us look at man in the different stages of hte and death, just as 
he is, and see how it compares or contrasts with the condition of our 
beau ideal man in our visionary society. Let us mark his moral con- 
dition. In the hour of death — this is the most sacred time in man's 
earthly being — the circumstances that surround him, the deeds of his 
life that pursue him, the terrible judgment and consequent responsi- 
bility that lift themselves up before him, combine to indicate to his own 
mind the terrible necessity of personal purity, and mental and moral 
perfection. He feels this as he never i'elt it before. But even here, 
where, at the bidding of God, angels keep watch over the destiny of the 
dying, long-treasured malice and revenge still linger around the very- 
holy of the holies of the heart. Insatiate ambition grasps with its 
faltering arm at every fleeting object of power that dances before its 
beclouded vision ; even envy is not satisfied with the gnawingsofa 
life-time, but sits fault-finding at the portals of the grave. 

But you may look after man still further : take the ver}' highest 
order of man, a chrlstian, in the very holiest place where man holds 
converse with God — at the sacramental board; here 'he swears al- 
legiance to his Saviour b}^ the blood which warmed his Saviour's heart, 
which sits in symbols before him ; here he is in full view of the com- 
manding majesty of Heaven, with the excruciating torture of the cross ; 
the unaffected simplicil}^ of the life and the spotless innocence of the 
character of the Saviour, the disinterested benevolence of the immortal 
God, graphically pictured to his mind, and compassionately appealing 
to his heart — here, where the footsteps of angels are cai-eflill}'- taken, 
the wild passions of man's wicked nature leap over all these hallowed 
environrnents ; here avarice looks with undaunted impudence in the 
very face of benevolence; impurity and crime claim for themselves a 
lurking-place in the heart of the Christian, and the devil disputes f^r 
dominion in the temple of God. 

Follow man further still : go with him into the congregation of re- 
ligious worshippers, where on the Sabbath da^'^ good men meet to rest 
from the labors of the week ; here, where the world is shut out, still 
the world comes in ; follow him out into society as it exists in our own 
countrj^ where the prime object of law is to secure equality and fVee- 
dom to the citizen; what do you see? Do not the rich grind the face 
of the poor? Do not the learned take advantage of the ignorant? Do 
not the strong bear down the weak? And, in the precious name of 
liberty, are not whole communities openly defrauded of their dearest 
rights ? 

What is the condition of society in the great city of New Y^Tk — the 
metropolis of the western, world? Here restrictive laws have brought 
all their powers to bear upon the evils of society for their correction. 
HeAa standing army of police officws claim supervision, under posi- 
liv(^aw, over the dwellings, and business, and intercourse of the 
people. Does society here present the reflex of our Utopian govern- 
ment — our imaginary humnn happiness and human perfeci^'cn? 

Is it not true that in the evening shadow of the Tribune { fficc uere 



15 

h no\^ reigning among the lower classes of the people a superstition, 
(consisting of spiritual rappings, table-turnings, fortune-telling, necro- 
mancy, clairvoyance, &c.,) as gloomy as the powovvings of heathen 
worship in the darkest ages of the world? Is there not in New York 
city, now, a barbarism comprising prize-fights, street mobs, midnight 
orgies, highway robberies, and petty pilferings, revolting to civilization, 
as terrible as the savage rule of the CamanchesiP Is there not a 
feverish and loathsome licenliohsness as vile as the abominations of 
the Sandwich Islands? Of the one milhon of inhabitants who live in . 
tins vast metropolis, is there one prudent man of property who ventures 
to lie down at night without locking his door to secure his house from 
the invasion of burglars ? or who feels a surprise to hear, when he rises 
in the morning, that innocent strangers have been murdered in the 
streets in the silent hours of midnight? 

All conditions of human society, fi'om the highest to the lowest, must 
feel the necessary inquielude of the governed — the impracticability of 
a just and impartial administration of government, so as to prevent com- 
plaint, and the constant dangers to which every member of society is 
exposed, whether with or without government. 

The source of much of the disquiet of the people at existing laws is 
a misapprehension of the character of government. They forget to con- 
sider that government is the effect rather than the cause of an}'' great 
good or great evil. 

"That government is best, which is best administered." 

THE CAUSE OF AFRICAN SLAVERY. 

It is not the silent letter of the law which enslaves the African, or 
restricts a single privilege of his race. He was a slave at home before 
lie was brought to iVmerica. He is now a slave. Free him in the slave 
States, where he is not in a majority of the population, and society 
would subject him to the same oppressive laws which are now brought 
to bear him down. That is now true. It is the prejudice and cupidity 
of the wljite man, and the ignorance and imbecility of the black man, 
which indicates the relative condition of each, and fixes the law of their 
respective power and consequent submission. 

What is the condition of the negro in the northern States, where the 
ratio of blacks to whites is such, that the blacks are scarcely a con- 
stituent element of society? Is it not true that prejudice and mal- 
ice have virtually robbed the negro of every conceivable source of hap- 
piness and right? In what northern State is this not true in relation 
to the free negro as a class ? In Indiana, in Illinois, and in Iowa it is a 
crime, with a degrading penalty, for any negro or mulatto to emigrate 
to those States. Even in New England — in Puritan New Englan(^, 
the Land of the Pilgrims — the black man need aspire to no higher 
position than that of a master barber, head cook, or hotel boot-black. 
This is the outside limit of his social position as a class. An individual 
exception to the rule there m<xv be. The prejudice is overpowering, 
and, poor unfortunate man, he is made to feel it; wherever he goes. It 
eats as a. canker in his bosom ; it burns as a fever in his blood. 



16 

In the South the proportion of the blacks to the whites is nearly as 
two to three. Here they are in slavery. That occasional wrong may 
be done them by cruel masters, is quite likely. That they have 
received more than their due proportion of the injuries allotted by Di- 
vine Providence to the human race, may also be true ; but, under the 
circumstances th^ surround them, in both the North and the South, 
that they suffer in person, in privilege, in character, in social regard, in 
the latter more than they suffer in the former section of the Union, is 
not true. 

In the South the police regulation places them on the plantation, 
subjected to plantation rules, among people of their own color, of their 
own kindred in the place of their birth. Interest, aflfection, and asso- 
ciation bind the master and his family to the slave and his family ; and 
it is a remarkable fact, that when the two famifies have grown up to- 
gether, so mutual are the attachments and regard, that slavery ceases 
in every other except its legal sense. In the North, excluded from 
society, the jail is the penalty inflicted upon them lor the exhibition of 
those infirmities common to their race, which are scarcely recognised in 
soutliem law as crimes in the conduct of the slave, under the rule of 
heartless prison-keepers, inured to cruelty, and dead to every senti- 
ment of kindness. 

Prejudice and false accusations bear him down and contribute to 
his misfortunes in the northern States ; for there he has not even a 
master to look after his rights and defend him against the encroach- 
ments of unscrupulous men who with impunity may rob him of the 
wages of his labor, outrage his feelings, and ruin his character. 

It is unphilosophical, impracticable, and without a single precedent 
in the history of human government, that anv race or any individual 
can gain social position until he has triumphed over social prejudices. 
These prejudices are co-extensive with his being. On the American 
continent they meet him. wherever he goes. At the table he is a 
waiter — never a guest ; from the common school his child is excluded 
a place with the child of the white man. It is true that in the church 
he communes with God through the sacred emblems of the body and 
blood of his Saviour, but not until after the white man has partaken ot 
these precious tokens of the love of God. In court he may be a crimi- 
nal, or he may perform the duties of a menial servant, but he is ex- 
cluded from the bench, the bar, the jury-box, and even from the wit- 
ness stand, though it be to protect his own most precious rights. Is 
this liberty ? Yet such is the condition of the black man even in the 
mighty frek North. 

There is a prejudice which underlies the law, much stronger than 
the law itself. Until that prejudice is removed the condition of the 
black man must retnain deplorable. He will seek refuge in that con- 
dition of society which gives him protection, though it be in the degraded 
relation of slavery. What, has been his treatment in the North? In 
Philadelphia, mobs have raised to drive him from the city. In Cin- 
cinnati he has been hunted down like a wolf When the slaves of 
John Randolph left the ])iantalion cottages of old Virginia to seek a 
home upon that rich free sod, so liberally granted by Virginia to the 



17 

Union — those unfortunate men who had lingered round the mansion of 
the Roanoke orator, and never knew that they had been slaves until 
they were freed, and found slavery in freedom ; whe n, after many 
weeks' hard travel, old men, women, and children sought a home of 
freedom upon their own land, they were met by an armed band and 
driven away and hunted down as outlaws. Added* to the prejudices 
against the black man are the interests of the white laboring classes, 
who, in competition with him, will destroy his business, or, in failing 
to effect this, will engage in the extermination of his race. 

In answer to these plain practical questions, which admit of no cavil 
that is beyond all successful contradiction, we are tauntingly asked, 
is fhe black man a brute ? Certainly not. He is an immortal man, 
with a soul that will burn in brilliant beauty long after the fires of the 
sun hrive died out. Why, then, this state of slavery? For the most 
humane of all reasons : t()r the protection of those ver}^ rights which 
are invaded by prejudice ; for the expansion and development of those 
very minds — jewt Is that have been buried in the darkness of idolatry 
for ages. 

The southern people have been insulted, aroused, and inflamed by- 
libellous publication.-, until, under the goading ot intermeddlers, they 
have pas-ed some laws which are urnecessary and unnatural, but 
which lie as a dead letter upon the statute-book, as a recoid of mis- 
guided feeling, which are scarcely ever executed. It is barbarous to 
tear asunder the bonds of matrimony ; it is sacrilegious to lay waste 
the family altar ; but, unfortunately lor our unhappy race, we have never 
beefi elevated above these misfortunes ; they transpire daily in every 
portion of the earth ; under the cover of law they ought never to take 
place, and the South owe it to the good name of their ancestors to modify 
those laws, correct these evils ; and if left undisturbed by abolitionists, 
they would do it. In the north, capital is arrayed against labor, and the 
sweat that falls from the brow of the mechanic and common laborer is 
only so much capital speculated upon by the capitalist who never 
labors. This state of things has always existed; it will most likely 
always continue; all efforts have failed to bring to bear efficient cor- 
rectives ; in the very effort to correct, a greater evil may ensue. 

Slavery is only one form of evil growing out of the effort to govern 
men, and it happens to be located and identified with the South. Have 
we any evils in the north, or in the general government, which bear un- 
equally upon the different classes of the country? Our great govern- 
ment IS rich — rich in mines, in resources, in yearly products; she is 
affluent, without a peer in the civilized world. She ought to be mag- 
nanimous to the poorer cl tsses of her own people ; she ought to be just. 
But what do we see? Does not the laboring man pay a heavy tax 
upon the salt that seasons his victuals ; upon the shirt and pants with 
which he is clothed ; on the calico dress of his wife, and the shoes of his 
children; upon the iron in his plough; upon his hoe, his gears, and upon 
the oil which preserves them? It is a heavy tax he pa3's. While the 
property of the rich man — his lands, his bank and railroad stocks, his 
pianos, his library — is taxed only one per cent., the poor man pays 
nearly forty per cent, upon nearly all the necessaries of life. Such i» 



18 

the justice dealt out to the poor man north and south. But this injustice 
is aggravated when the apphcations of the moneys are fairly tabled. 
Why is this tax levied upon him — upon the poor man, who has not a 
comfortable cabin in winch to live ? The first answer is, to give inci- 
dental protection to the business of the rich man, who lives in the style 
of an eastern prince~to the manufacturer of the northern States. After 
this money is thus raised, how is it spent"? Why, to pay for public 
documents, engraved sea- voyage reports, electioneering campaign 
books, which are sent to the leaders of party, or to the parlors of the 
wealthy and fashionable, but never to the poor man's cabin, or the 
workshop of the laborer. Look at this statement : 

The poor laboring man's salary is 320 per month, or per year, of 
12 months, S240. His clothing for himself and family costs SlOO ; 
of this SlOO, 840 is tariff on his clothes. 

Making just one sixth of his whole salary, to say nothing of his taxes 
upon the necessaries of life. How are the proceeds of this robbery upon 
labor applied ? Why, a very large amount of it is squandered and 
pilfered; some of it is appropriated to buy books to send to his rich 
neighbors. Just think of it — one sixth of the ordinar^^ laborer's wages, 
two months of every year, given to government, every cent of which 
is absolutely necessary for the decent support of himself and family; 
more than enough to pay the tuition of his children is filched from him 
by officials, stolen quietly from him before it has been in his pocket; 
3'es, taken from him to buy books for his landlord, or applied to protect 
the capital of manufacturing earls. This is unjust, oppressive, outrageous. 
The wrong is magnified when it is properly considered that the wealth 
of the country is boundless. Her public lands are a national fund that 
ought to yield sufficient for the support of government economically 
administered ; but how are they disposed of"? For the benefit of the 
poor? No. Do the poor have equal chances in the sales of them? 
No. Is it not true that by the general government these lands are 
given in immense bodies to rich companies to create monopolies, which 
will ultimately control the country? The injustice of this will be more 
a|)parent when more thoroughly presented, so that the government 
may lose nothing in the creation of these mammoth monopolies. Pro- 
vision is made to raise the price of the poor man's land just one hun- 
dred per cent., and this iujustice, which vv^ill create invidious classes in 
the society of the white man, has met with no opposition except from 
the South. 

Manj' other evils than domestic slavery, contravening the very same 
principles of human rights which are involved in it, and winch are 
suffered by white men, call loudly for legislative remedy, where w^e 
have the unquestionable legislative power to control the evil. Why 
not save all this argument? This party does not so much as propose the 
abolition of slavery. The men of the Republic! n par'y repel the insin- 
uation that they have intimated the emancipation of the negroes. 
They do not so much as propose to free one human being, not one. 
It is the ground which they propose to emancipate, the soil v-liirh they 
intend to hee. They protest that they want none of the black pop- 
alation, either free or slave. 



19 

In a late article in answer to the charge that Mr. Fremont is a slave- 
holder, the Tribune denies that any such issue is mride against slave- 
holders as would exclude them from any high official position and 
power. The whole is reduced down to the bare question of free- 
soil. 

FREE SOIL. 

The most specious, transparent, captivating, and yet unmeaning word 
in the whole nomenclature of political claptrap, is this word free 
SOIL. It is one of those apparent synonyms of benevolence which 
carries to the idle mind a splendid promise, and means less than nothing 
at all. It addresses itself to the love of liberty, and the rights of man. 
Yet it really proposes to do no one act which can directly or remotely 
benefit the negro, as a race, or as a single individual. If freedom to 
the black man be his natural right, the Free-soil party does not pro- 
pose to secure it to one single negro or mulatto. If it be a political 
blessing, this Free-soil party has not an offer of it to one single child of 
the downtrodden race of Ham. It does not offer freedom to an}- body ; 
but, on the contrary, the history of this Free-soil movement carries 
with it a single series of proscriptions to the black man and the white 
man both. It began by excluding the right of white men to carry 
slaves within its borders ; but soon the real character of this movement 
was manifest. It was quite apparent that this warfare was not against 
slavery as a system, but against the Africans as a race, for in Ohio 
he was long excluded the State by the most savage laws, whilst he 
voted in iNorth Carolina and Pennsylvania when they were both slave 
States. In Kentucky and South Carolina, in Tennessee and North 
Carolina, the negro may be a large property"- holder, if free; v/hilst in 
Illinois, in Indiana, and in Iowa, it is a crime for a l^lack man to seek a 
home ON this free soil. Indiana and Illinois were the offspring of 
the ordinance of 17S7 ; yet by the constitution of Indiana, the blacks 
are excluded the Slate, and are thereby declared unfit lop freedom, 
whilst in Illinois a poor wayfaring African may be sold out hv ven- 
turing to rest his limbs on their free soil. Nor did Barbour, John U. 
Pettit, and Mace, then prominent Democrats, now^ Free-soil leaders 
of their party in the State of Indiana, see any wrong done to the blacks 
in this exclusion, for, notwithstanding this proscription, it still remained 
free soil. In the State of Indiana a black mnn may be stricken down, 
his son may be beaten, bis wife and daughter may be violati'd in his 
presence by the vilest white men; and without even a master to redress 
his wrong, or pursue the enemy of his household, the poor African, though 
half liis blood be Anglo Saxon, would not dare even file an information 
affidavit setting forth his wrongs, or seeking redress for his injuries. 
Whilst in South Carolina the free black ma}' make affidavit for himself: 
and the master ma}'", on behalf of his slave. Nor does a white man 
dare employ the black man in Indiana, under heavy penalties ; yet 
this is/rce soil, made so by the ordinance of 17S7. 

When Trumbull, and Bissell, and Lincoln, and the illustrious 
John Went worth led the van of the Illinois D-^voocracy, those laws 
were enacted which make it a crime, with the ner.dtv o*^" ^ ' rr>:-iture 



J 



20 

of liberty, for a black man to breathe the atmosphere or set his feet 
upon theyree soil of Illinois. Yet, this is a part of the Territory made 
/ree by the ordinance of 17S7, and these gentlemen are the benevolent 
leaders of the Free-soil party. Iowa was the first-born daughter of the 
Missouri compromise, and punishes with imprisonment any negro or 
mulatto who ventures emigration to her/ree soil. 

Lord Mansfield says that no slave can breathe the air of Great 
Britain ; so no black man can tread theyree so i^ of those " ordi.\ance," 
and " coMPuoMiSE," and "sacred compact" Free-soil States. As 
though to complete the solemn farce and tinsel the grave burlesque of 
free soil, in the struggle for conquest in Kansas, the framers of the 
Topeka constitution were careful that free negroes and mulattoes 
should be excluded the contemplated y'ree-soi/ State. 

Government cannot be applied to soil. Government is the ruling 
law of men — rational men; and there is just as much good sense in 
talking of free vegetation, and less absurdity in speaking of fref horses, 
than in speaking of free soil. This party does not propose to enlighten the 
black man and elevate his mental aspirations. It does not propose 
to educate him, and prepare him for a higher state of social being. 
It does not propose to give him one cent fjr his moral culture or his 
religious improvement. It proposes to make him a pretext for offi- 
cial promotion and public plunder. 

Now, honestly, what do they mean by free soil? Throwing off the 
circumlocutions of language, the flowers of rhetoric, and the new-coined 
nomenclature of party phraseology, does it not mean, practically, about 
this : A soil from which all Africans are excluded — a mere Shibboleth 
of disappointed political aspirants to catch up honest and well-disposed 
yet deluded men, for the mere sake of personal preferment and politi- 
cal POWE K ? 

THE RELATIVE POSITION OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH TO SLAVERY IN 

THE UNITED STATES. 

That IS not a bad law of benevolence which demands that ^ A man 
should be just before he is generous;" nor is that an unreasonable law 
of gentility which indicates that ever}- man should exemphly his pre- 
cepts by his actions. And upon these two unquestionably just princi- 
ples do we now examine the superior claims to benevolence of the free 
States as agauist the slave States. 

To correctly determine their relative position of regard and love for 
the Af ican race, we subjoin the following table. There were, in the 
year 1850, in the slave States — 

Free negroes. 

Alabama 2,205 

Arkansas , . 608 

District of Columbia 10 059 

Delaware 18,075 

Florida 9^2 

Georgia 2,931 

Kentucky 10 Oil 

Louisiana , 17,162 

Maryland 74,723 

Mississippi , . 930 



21 

Missouri 2,618 

North Carolina 27,463 

South Carolina 8,^60 

Tennessee 6,422 

Texas 397 

Virginia 54,333 



23^,209 



Slaves freed by legislation in what are now free States. 

California 

Connecticut 2,759 

Illinois 917 

Indiana 237 

Iowa 16 

Maine 2 

Massachusetts 1 

Michigan 32 

New Hampshire 158 

INew Jersey 7,557 

New York 20,343 

Ohio G 

Pennsylvania 3,737 

Rhode Island , 952 

Vermont 17 

Wisconsin 



36,734 



In making this estimate I allow that the highest number of slaves 
which were ever held at any one time in those States wliich are now 
free were freed by legislation. But we may justly make a deduction 
of those slaves which were sold, and those which were freed by volun- 
tary emancipation, amounting, together, to at least one-fourth of the 
whole number of slaves in those Slates. Then the tables stand thus: 

Originally 36,734 

Freed and sold — one-fourth 9,1 8 ■< 

Leaving 27,551 

which were fj-eed by legislation in the free States, whilst (including 
their descendants) 238,209 negroes have been freed by voluntary 
emancipation in the slave Stales. 

This calculation excludes those negroes who were emancipated in 
slave States, and emigrated to the free States. The foregoing table 
proves, that in the slave States, where there is a population of 9,664, - 
656, there are 238,209 free negroes, or one free negro in forty persons; 
whilst in the free States, where there is a population of 13,434,922, 
there is a free negro population of 195,071, or one free negro in every 
sixty-nine of the population ; which is a demonstration of the fact that 



22 

the negroes are freed by voluntary emancipation (juite as rapidly as 
they prove themselves capable of enjoying liberty. 

Free negroes in the free States. 

California.... 17 

Connecticut , 7,693 

Illinois . 5,436 

Indiana 11,262 

Iowa 333 

Maine 1,356 

Massachusetts 9,064 

Michigan 2,5S3 

ISew Hampshire 520 

New Jersey 23,810 

New York 49,069 

Pennsylvania 53,626 

Ohio 25^279 

Rhode Island „ . 3,670 

Vermont 71S 

Wisconsin 635 



195,071 



This table shov/s that even now there are more free negroes in the 
slave Slates than in tlie free Stales. 

The above tables prove that the moral power of the country, by ele- 
vating the moral condition of the slave, has done tor him infinitely 
more than all political power and political causes put together. And 
it may be very properly submitted to the nothern people, whether it is 
not their duty to contribute as much, in proportion to their wealth and 
population, to the freedom of the slave as the South has already done, 
before they open their mouths in reproach against the South. 

The foregoing tables demonstrate several thmgs : 

1st. That the emancipation of slaves in most of the free States amounted 
to a merely nominal abolition, for there were very few slaves in those 
States to free. 

2d. That the benevolence and philanthropy of the abolitionists 
have exhibited more of the spirit of officious intermeddling than any 
one real desire for the real good of the slave. 

In the* year 1850, in ihe slave States there were voluntarily manu- 
mitted 1,467 slaves, which is 46 more than were ever freed by legisla- 
tive enactment in all of the Slates of Vermont, Maine, Massachu- 
setts, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire, Michigan, apd 
Indiana, all of which were once slaveholding States ; and in the same 
year there w, re ueaviy as many slaves, fugitives from the slave States, 
as were thus freed by the above States. These figures can't lie ; these 
facts are undeniable. 

So much for tlie principles involved in the slavery element of this 
contest. 



23 

So far this parly is an illustrated national fraud committed upon the 
country — a most glaring imposition upon a large body of its supporters. 
This trick has been made complete. The last stroke of policy is the 
most uncandid of all the rest. It is the attempt, by bullying and de- 
nunciation, to drive the northern wing of the Whig party, without pro- 
test, into the support of the men and measures of this new organiza- 
tion. The Whig party had no legitmiate connexion with this move- 
ment. It is an abandonment of all her ancient principles to affiliate 
with it. Forgetting former contests, abandoning former principles, 
under the captious lead of mere upstart politicians, who have in form and 
in act ostracised statesmanship, who assume control over the masses, 
which the masses have not conferred upon them, or invited them to, 
this party draw black lines around the names of high-minded, honor- 
able men, who ref ise to lend their aid to civil war and revolution. 
Traitor and doughface are names applied to every northern man who 
eschews the fanaticism of this party. Where such authority is as- 
sumed, and such means are employed to slander the fuir character 
and browbeat into debasing submission the most honorable body of 
conservative men now in the countty, it is a duty we owe to civil 
liberty and to contemporaneous history to expose these pretensions — to 
rebuke these assumptions. 

By what right do these men call any Whig to account for not ad- 
hering to their party ? The two parties have not one element of char- 
acter in common. 

1. The Whig party, as pledged by its platforms, was conservative, 
peace-making, law-abiding: the Repubhcan party is ultra, aggressive, 
and revolutionary. 

2. The Whig party was a great constructive political organization, 
that ga.ve to the country its first impulses to internal improvement and 
domestic manufactures. It proposed the development of our great na- 
tional resources, \\n' building of railroads, the fortification of the sea- 
board, and the improvement of her harbors. In the contemplation of 
the great Whig party, the productive power of every valley, the grass 
upon every hill, the mineral in the bosom of the mountain, and the 
crystal streams that washt d by the mountain side, were so many varied 
investments by the God of nature for the improvement, and blessing, 
and comfoit of the citizen, and the glory of the countrv. 

On the other hand, the Republican party is a destructive organization, 
that proposes to invade the present state of society with radical 
changes ; that counsels the resistance to law with the force of arms and 
the violence of civil war, and threatens, if its dictates are not com- 
plied with, to destroy the nation itself 

That immortal Whig, Daniel Webster, said: "Liberty and union, 
now and forever, one and inseparable." Republican Banks says; 
*' Let the L^nion slide.'* 

3. The Whig party was comprehensive, liberal, and patriotic. The 
Repubhcan parly have narrowed down the issues of a campaign and 
tlie desiiuies of the repubhc to one idea, and that idea is one which has 
no legitimate connexion with politics. They have proscribed every man 
as a ^^ djughfuce^" a ^^ traitor,'''' a ''■sycophant,^'' who does not take the 
same view of questions of public policy which they do. They de- 



24 

clare contempt for even the preservation of the country, if it be not 
preserved by their own party, and upon their own terms. 

4. The Whig party did not shrink from contest, though she never in- 
vited it. She met it when it was otfered her ; but it was the conflict of 
mind wiih mind in the discussion of great principle*, in the determina- 
tion of great truths. The speeches of Clay, Webster, Clayton, Ber- 
rien, Preston, Crittenden, Rives, and Bell, will go down to posterity 
as congressional history, and their memories will be held in precious 
remf^mbrance as long as true oratory has an admirer, or civil liberty a 
friend. 

The Republican party invites contest and provokes quarrel ; but 
it is the contest of passion and prejudice — the virus of envy intiised 
from the poisoned tongue of slander and thrown into the life-blood of 
the body politic; the contest of jealousy, whose infernal fires are 
fanned b};- detraction and fed by falsehood; the contest of malignit}' 
that hunts down the living, that throws its missiles at the good name 
of the absent, and, jackall-like, howls around the sepulchres of the 
illustrious dead. Nor is it the quarrel of contending parties, aroused 
by a sense of injustice done them and fearless of conflict -and death. 
It is the bandying of epithets, the inauguration into the council cham- 
bers of the country of the vernacular of the billiard saloon and the 
billiua-gate of the beershop. 

5. The Whig platlorm embraced not one single article or principle 
contained in the late Republican manifesto of doctrines. 

6. The great leaders of the old Whig party have declined participa- 
tion in the movement of the Republican party, whilst most of the 
prominent of that party have sought other political affinities. Among 
thn men who, in the palmy days of Whig honor, and power, and 
glory, enjoyed its confidence and led its forces, were Ru us Choate, 
Robert C. VVinthrop, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; John M. 
Clayton, of Defiware; William C. Rives, George W.Summers, A. H. 
H. Stewart, of Virginia ; W. C. Preston, Waddy Thompson, of South 
Carohna; Robert Toombs, A. H. Stevens, Crawford, and Jenkins, of 
Gef)rgia ; H W. Hilliard, of Alal»ama; Benjamin, of Lousiana ; John 
Bell, Jame-i C. Jones, Neil Brown, of Tennessee; John J. Crittenden 
the Marshalls and Breckinridges, and John B. Thompson, of Kentucky 
George E. Badger, Willie P. .Mangum, and K. Stanley, of North Car 
olina ; J. A. Pearce, Thomas Pratt, Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland 
Richard W Thompson, of Indiana; Ewing and Corwin, of Ohio 
George Evans, of Maine. In view of thes'^ facis, what claim has the 
Ri'pul)lic HI organization to anv consideration whatever from the old 
Whig party "? We have carefully examined every element in the com- 
poshion of the Republican party. In its nakedness look at its issues. 
Carefully and thoroughly canvass its claims. On the other hand, the 
principles ot the Whig party are set forth with clearness and directness, 
without equivocation. Look at them. Is there anything in common 
in the two parties ? But, on the other hand, who leads this Republican 
party? The great standard-bearer hlm^elf is a secedii/g Dr mocrat 
by profession. In Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, N. 
P. Batiks, who were all originally the pohtical enemies of Daniel 



25 

Wehster, are now the expounders of the RepubHcHi faith. In New 
-York, Preston King; in New Hampshire, John P. Hale: in Maine, 
Hannibal Hamlin; in Pennsylvania, David Wilmot and G. A. Grow; 
in Ohio, Leiter and Chase ; in Indiana, Barbour, Mace, and John 
U. Pettit; in Illinois, Lyman Trumbull, John Wentworth, and W. 
H. Bissell, are the prominent Free-soil leaders. Horace Greeley 
said that the Whig party is dead, and these seceding Democrats claim 
the right, without invitation, voluntarily to administer upon the estate 
and appropriate to themselves the effects, and kindly to act guardian 
to her orphan children. 

Surely no Whig will see political obligations resting upon him to sup- 
port this new party. Yet, upon their part, no effort will be spared to 
bully him. into submission to, or slander him into acqui«escence in their 
measures as administered by these men. 

THE MEANS EVIPLOYED TO SECURE SUCCESS. 

The composition of this party, the object of its being, the bold issues 
presented, are not more startling and extraorduiary than the means em- 
ployed lor the accomplishment of their purposes. 

THE COURSE OF THE OLD ABOLITION PARTY. 

The old Abolition party, for the time being, gave way grounds which 
she had hitherto regarded as essentially sacred ; she now slumbered and 
fell back into the foreground of Republicanism, as it now is. 

SECRET LODGES. 

In the mean time, in every ward in the cities, in every country vil- 
lage, at every cross-road school-house in the rural districts of the 
North, lodges were formed, and men bound by oath to support ihe 
members of their order in preference to all other persons whatsoever. 
They used significant j^ass- words. They made it a point to receive no 
old politician into their lodges; if he were an honest man, this would 
have been fatal to their purpose — it would have secured their earlier 
exposition. They made every manner of pretension, and every variety 
of purpose was ostensibly set forth in plea for the organization. 

To old men, they would argue the necessity of a purification of the 
government, and, in the degeneracy of the times, they would bring back 
things to the simplicity and economy of Jefferson, Washington, and 
Madison. 

To the conservative men they presented a gloomy picture of the 
dangers of the dissolution of the Cnion, and promised, in this new or- 
ganization, a great national salvator. 

To the office-seekers, who had been disgusted with disappointment, 
they depicted and deplored the monopolization of the offices of the 
country by men of foreign birth, and gave, as the basis of the party 
organization, the ostracism of all foreigners indiscriminately. 

To the Protestant, they appealed to the prejudices and passions 
'aroused by ancient religious wars and sectarian persecutions, and gave 
him assurances that the Catholic interest in the civil government of 
America should be ignored forever; that no Catholic, nor one whose 



26 

wife was a Catholic, or who was the supporter of a Catholic, or one 
who did not join this order to oppose the Catholic in this peculiar man- 
ner, should hold any office whatever under the government. 

To the abolitionist they presented the real issue, and made the true 
appeal, and promised to seduce thousands from old party affinities, and 
chain them with oaths, and then direct their votes for the accomplish- 
ment of the Q;reat free-soil reform. 

To young men they promised promotion, and position, and honor, as 
inducement to commence an early political career. 

Pohlical chicanery was reduced to a science, and falsehood formed 
the basis of the whole organization — conceived in deception, and con- 
summated in a great fraud upon public credulity. 

THE PRESS.— SLANDER. 

The press is prostituted to corrupt the public mind — inductive rea- 
soning is sneered at; disgraceful epithets manufactured; slanders, the 
misrepresentation of private business, the vilest assaults upon personal 
character and domestic life, are the ordinary means employed to excite 
the public mind. The ruling power is denounced as imbecile and 
despotic; conservative men are branded with cowardice; the hving are 
attacked in their homes; the unwithering laurels of the illustrious dead 
are not too precious to be trampled under their feet, nor the sepulchre 
too sacred to preserve it from the vandal fury of these despoilers. 

Burns well said: "That man was scarce o' news, who tauld his 
father was hanged." And that will be a gloomy day in the history 
of American literature, when the aspersions made against revolutionary 
heroes can find a iiermanerit place in an American library. By this new 
party, schools, colleges, universities, are appropriated to the discussion 
of these topics, and the minds of the young are poisoned with sectional 
bitterness. 

The pulpit, the great conservator of the peace and happiness of the 
world, is perverted to most extraordinary purposes in this campaign. 
During the times of the Revolution, churches were used as citadels ot 
defence against the invasion of a foreign enemy who \vas burning our 
cities and cornfields, gibbeting our soldiers, and committing indiscrim- 
inate slaughter upon men, women, and children. It \vas right to de- 
fend ourselves. The very source of the law-making power was ar- 
rayed in war against us. There was no other remedy left for us ; it was 
our duty to fight. In terrible times the temple of God has very appro- 
priately become our city of refuge, and as such has been sacredly 
regarded even by invaders in every civilized country. But with the 
law ruling over us — with not one wrong which the law will not speedily 
redress when applied to — to use the house of God for the purpose of 
inflaming the passions of the people, to raise in arms to butcher their 
neighbors, is a high crime against the Prince of Peace, which can ad- 
mit of no justification w^hatever, consistent with that "peace on earth, 
good will to man, glory to God in the highest," wdiich was first sung 
by the angels at the birth of the Saviour. 

But this has been done in New England. Good men have been 
shocked by these demonstrations; bad men have been licensed by 



27 

them to go forth and commit crimes and riot ; children have watched 
the movement, and the example will long live in their minds after the 
precepts of the gospel have been forgotten, and terrible will be the 
accountability of these men at the bar ot Heaven. Weak men have been 
placed in power by surprise to the people, to the lasting injury of civil 
government, to the burning shame and disgrace of the country ; trick- 
sters, who before had but their chances to run, were by that process 
secured in their aspirations b}'- oaths exacted from their supporters. 
Legislative experience has been presented as an objection to official 
position, and sneered at as a qualification for the performance of offi- 
cial duties. It has become the boast of party men, that old ojfice-holdcrs 
have been displaced, and the representative government is now in the 
hands of men fresh from the people. 

With this new party lemperance has been ostensibly, but never has 
been really an issue. Benevolence to the slave has been paraded in 
the Free-soil platform as the ultima thtde of the organization ; but prac- 
tically and really the issues are made regardless of his condition or 
happiness. It is free soil they are contending for — the c7nancipation 
of the land that they insist upon. But they have a real issue with the 
democratic party, a real object in view, and under a quiet transparent 
cover of the names of Zi6er/^, and morality, and temperance, and jyrogress, 
they are drifting the wind in the distance, and, with keen scent, are 
following the spoils ot office. Many of them complain of their disap- 
pointment, and charge home upon the present administration a want of 
faith in the failure to appreciate their real worth and to reward their 
real service in the labor of their party. This class of gentlemen have 
been trimming for a life-time between parties, and, alternatel}'^ fed an<i 
famishing between part}' spoils and parly disappointment, they are most 
furious in their warfare. Disappointed at every stage of their political 
Ufe, they are quite profuse in their political vituperation ; " ten thousand 
thousands are their throats, but only teats for one." It is a misfortune 
in this government that the executive office is encumbered by an op- 
pressive patronage such as now encumbers it. 

In the incoming of each administration, instead of this class of men, 
expecting, as they should, that the powers of the government will be 
directed to the ends of justice, the}'- would have, and try to make 
scenes, at and after the inauguration of President of the United 
States, with their scrambles for office, like the western land sales, 
where bids and clubs are alternately used to bu}', and intimidate buy- 
ers. Finding no one so corrupt ;is themselves, they go away dissatisfied ; 
and failing to make honorable men subserve their purposes, they 
commence a warfare upon those in office, without respect to either 
tlieir character or qualifications. 

Office, power, and patronage, are the real issues w^ith these 
men ; and to gain them, they dare present other issues as contingencies, 
upon the failure of which, in this party contest, civil war is offered as 
the alternative of defeat with them. 

The issue now made up is not equivocal, but clear, well defined, 
and terrible. Read it irom the New York Tribune, and the leading " 
papers of that party : 



28 

" We urge, therefore, unbending determination on the nart of the northern members hostile 
to this intolerable outrage, and demand of them, in behalf of peace — in behalf of freedom — in 
behalf of jnstice and humanity — resistance to the last. Better that confusion should ensue — 
better that itiscord should reign in the national councils — better that Co»gress should break up in 
wild disorder — nay, better that the Capitol itself should blaze by the torch of the incendiary . or fall 
and bury all its mmates beneath its crumbling ruins, than that this perfidy and wrong should 
be finally accomplished." 

This invites results which the noblest impulses of human hope can 
scarcely outlive. It is couched in language as violent, reckless, revo- 
lutionary, and incendiary, as words and sentences can make it. 

To the citizens of the whole country ihese issues are addressed in 
tens of thousands of copies of that vindictive sheet scattered over the 
land. The question is not liberty or slavery, Whig or Democrat, or even 
Free- soil and Democracy, giving to each their legitimate chances among 
an honorable and liberty-loving people ; but it is, shall Republicanism 
triumph, and the country perish in the struggle ? and whether it is of 
no matter " that the Capitol itself should haze by the torch of the incen- 
diary.'''' This is, then, the unmistakable issue drawn out by their 
leaders before the country. "Rule or ruin" is their motto. Their ob- 
ject in the coming campaign is the spoils of office, or the dissolution of. 
the Union. 

The following paragraphs cannot be easily misapprehended — read 
them: 

REPUBLICANISM AND DISUNION. 

»■ JOHN P. HALK, 

The abolition candidate for President against Scott and Pierce in 1852 : What is his 
record? On the 7th of February, IS50, he presented, insisted upon, and along with Chase 
a>id Seward alone, voted to recfive, refer, and consider a petition demanding of Congress " an 
immediate dissolution of the Union," because a union with slaveholders is violative of divine 
law and human rights. Cass, Corwin, Benton, Clay, and Webster, with forty-six other 
Senators, voted against it. 

On the 23d of March, 1848, he presented a batch of eight petitions at once demanding the 
same thing. 

BENJAMIN F. WADE. 

Hear him: 

" He thought there was but one issue before the people, and that was the question of Ameri- 
can slavery. He said the whig party is not only dead but stinks. It shows signs occasionally 
of convulsive spasms, as is sometimes exhibited in the dead snake's tail, after the head and 
body have been buried. 

" There is really no union now between the North and the South, and he believed no two na- 
tions upon the earth entertained feelings of more bitter rancor towards each other than these 
two nations of the republic." 

N. p. BANKS, JR., 

The "Union slider" Speaker of the abolition House of Representatives, is a leader of the 
Fremont party, and was withdrawn from the candidacy of the Know-nothing seceders' con- 
ventiim to make way for Ficmont. Hear him : 

"Although I am not one of that class of men who cry for the perpetuation of the Union, 
though 1 am willing in a certain state of circumstances to let it slide, I have no fear for its per- 
petuation. But let me say, if the chief object of the people of ihis country he to maintain and 
propagate chattel property in man — in other words, human slavery — this Union cannot and 
ought not to stand." 

HORACE MANN. 

Hear him : 

" In conclusion, I have only to add that such is my solemn and abi ing conviction of the 
character of slavery, tha', uhdcr a full sense of try responsibilty to ny country and my God, 
I deliberately say, better disunion — better a civil or a servile war — better anything that God in 
his Providence yl; ill send — than an extension of the bonds of slavery.'^ 



29 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Hear him : 

" The good citizen as he reads the requirements of this act— the fuffitive slave— is filled with 
horror. * * Here the path of duty is clear I am bound to disobey this act." 

"Sir," I will not dishonor this home of the Pil'Trims and of the Revolution by admitting — 
nay, 1 cannot believe — that this bill will be executed here." 

RUFUS r. SPALDING 

Was a member and leader of the convention. Hesr him : 

" In the c se of the alternative beinK presenf'd of the continuance of slavery or a dissolution 
of the Union, I am for dissolution of the Union. 1 am for di.-^solution, and 1 care not how 
quick it comes." 

HON. ERASTUS HOPKINS, 

Of Massachusetts, was a member of the convention. Hear him : 

" If [leari ful means fail us, and we are driven to the last extremity where ballots are useless 
then we'll make bullets effective." [Tremendous a[iplause.] 

GEN. JAMES WATSON WEBB 

Was a leader in the convention. Hear him in a speech on the floor : 

" On the action of this convention depends the fate of the country ; if the 'Republicans' fail 

at the ballot-box, we will be forced to drive back the slaveocracy with fire and the sword." 

[Cheers ] 

Hear also H. M. Addison, of the American Advertiser, in the same strain : 

" I deest slavery, and say unhesitatingly thst I am in favor of its abolition by some means, 

if it should send all fhe pnrty orffauizations in the Union, and the Union itself, to the deril ! If 

it can oidy exist by holding millions of hunan beings in the mo^t abj'^ot at.d cruel sy.- tern of 

slavery that ever cursed the earth, it is a great pity it iras ever formed, and the sooner it is dissolved 

the better." 

ANSON BURLINGAME 

A Massachusetts member of Congress, is also a leader of the Fremont party. Hear him : 

" The timf s demand, and we must have, an anti-slavery constitution, an anti slavery Bible, 
and an anti-slavery God." 

CIVIL WAR AND DISSOLUTION. 
This issue they do not prosecute in bold, open, manly warfafe- 
They propose to weaken and undermine, and then overthrow the gov- 
ernment. They set up imaginary standards of right, to which all law 
must conform, and to which all legislation must be subservient. It 
laws are uvjust, cruel, or uro7ig, according to their standard, they do 
not propose their repeal by the law-making power, but counsel armed 
resistance to law. If laws are unconstitutional, they do not propose 
their abrogation by an appeal to the judiciary — the constitutional rem- 
edy for the correction of unconstitutional laws ; but that the consUtu- 
tioih l"w, and government itself shall fall a prey to the maddened mob — 
a victim to the fury of the licentious multitude. Is not the spectacle 
now presented to the country alarming and terrible? ^Martial law 
exists in Washington Territory; Indian war in Oregon. There is rev- 
olution in California and civil war in Kansas, and a licentiousness in 
Utah that burlesques all Christian government. 

These demonstrations of lawles'sness are not mere spontaneous out- 
bursts of passion in different portions of the country ; they are the 
legitimate fruits of the teachings of revolutionary men who seek reluge 
from imaginary wrongs in lawless anarchy. 

In Boston, in the name of God and religion, officers of the law were 
shot down by an irresponsible mob, because they believed the fugitive- 
slave law unconstitutional. The Supremo Court of the United States 
could have been very properly appealed to to determine this great 
legal question. ^ 



30 

But as though to make the triumph ol mob-law supreme, the judg- 
ment of the Supreme Court is challenged in the United States Senate 
as time-serving, and the court itself is characterized as the citadel of 
slavery. 

In Wisconsin the leading citizens join in a mob to liberate a slave. 
The highest State judicial tribunal defends the lawless course by de**. 
ciding a question over which it had no jurisdiction whatever. 

But when to mobs is surrendered the rule of the country, like other 
bodies invested with discretionary power, they are by no means so 
ready to surrender it as they were to receive it. They deem the 
"fugitive-slave law" unconstitutional, and oppose its execution. But 
these same gentlemen take it into their heads that imprisonment for 
life, though it be the extent of the law, is not a sufficient punishment 
for the crime of murder, nor the sherirF the proper officer to enforce 
law. They follow the indications of high judicial decisions. In another 
case they arrest the prisoner from the hands of the law, and bar- 
barously drag him to the gallows. This might, by a bare possibility, 
be doing no injustice in an individual instance, but it does violence to 
that legal security without which there cannot long exist either justice 
or law. These outbreaks are spreading over the land. They are 
spreading under the auspices of a perverted judiciary. They are sup- 
ported by ministers of religion who have subsidized the temple of 
God, and prostituted the Sai)bath of Christian civilization for the rais- 
ing of fire-arms, the commission of murder, and the plotting of treason 
against the hberties of the people and the perpetuity of the govern- 
ment under the sanctit}' of the hallowed name of duty and brotherly 
love. 

Lawless men will take courage from, and plead the precedent of 
these nuUifiers of law and justice and order. If this party is sustained 
by the popular vote, it may yet come upon us at a day near at hand, 
that other cities than San Francisco may establish mariial law, and 
send forth guerrilla bands to the rural districts to regulate the affairs of the 
country ; for if it be right to violate law in Boston to free a slave, it wiU 
be right to take him by force from Missouri or Maryland ; and for all this 
they will plead precedent — precedent established by the staid people 
of Boston, precedent set by Puritan divines, precedent made and ap- 
proved under the auspices and patronage of a Zi^er^^-loving people, 
precedent sustained by the judiciary of Wisconsin. 

Wiih this state of things, soon will follow the entire rupture of com- 
munications between the States, and then the destruction of commerce. 
And our navy and merchantmen, following the example of judges and 
divines, will, in the wild spirit of free-booting and plunder, engage 
in war to free the slaves along the sea-board, and baptise the ocean 
with the blood of their countr3^men; this will soon induce a general 
border war all along the line. Intercepting marauding companies 
will engage in tearing up railroads that have cost years of labor and 
millions of money. Parties made up of street loafers, prison con- 
victs, headed by adventurous men without principle, without property, 
and without stake in the country, will sally forth on each side of the 
black and bloody line of the contending sections to lay waste farms, 



31 

and light up the dwellings of innocent men with ihe bonfires of midnight. 
Our great nat'on, wliich ted starving Ireland only yesterday, on to- 
morrow will, unless these flagrant outrages cease, engage in cutting 
the throats of poor distracted Americans. 

By fanning this flame — by a dissolution of the Union, such as is pro- 
posed in the extracts above, the misguided politicians of New England 
will throw out of emploj-ment her millions of Citizens. The shop, the 
loom, and the anvil will cease their murmuring music, and tens of 
thousands of the restless men who are now waging war against the 
peace of the country will be found clamoring fur bread, and driving 
irom their bosom the factious leaders who have sown this spirit of na- 
tional discord among them — who have blighted their highest hopes and 
lliwarted their holiest aspirations. In this anarchy, the necessary re- 
sult of these doctrines, bands of regulators will be instituted to correct 
the evils and promote the good of the country ; trial by jury, the de- 
termination of legal questions by the ordinary process of regular gov- 
ernment, will be entirel}' too slow and uncertain ibr these reformers. 

Then will the press gather its freedom from the dictum of alternate 
factions, which will in turn assume to rule the various fragments oi 
our mutilated country. Free speech will be under the same iron rule, 
regulated by like passions of like men. Then will Republican, Ameri- 
can, Fourrierite, Abolitionist, each in their turn play Jack Ketch, or 
perish on the gibbet, just as fortune or power may smile or frown upon 
them. Nor will the writ of habeas corpus — the birthright of every Amer- 
ican, the last hope of injured innocence — avail anything. With the 
revolutiotiary remnants of our ruptured government, Dante, Marat, and 
Robespierre, peers of Nero, Commodus, and Caligula — names that have 
marked the ultra limits of incarnated despotism, cruelty, and crime — 
will be pleaded in precedent for the justiflcation of all these outrages, 
and necessity will be the broad principle upon which apolog}' will be 
ofiered in defence of these infernal wrongs ; these crimes against civili- 
zation and Christianity — against earth and Heaven. 

Nor will the rights of conscience be any better preserved than the 
liberty of speech. Another inquisitorial age may succeed, when the 
opinions of men may be tortured from them, and traps be laid to en- 
ti-ammel them, and star-chambers may be instituted, and their own 
frank testimony turned against honest men to secure their conviction 
and insure their destruction. In this heated fanaticism these men will 
fancy themselves religious, and in the holy name of Christianity they 
will doom Christians to expiate their heresy at the stake or on the 
scaffold. 

Nor will these things stop here. Temples of God will be lighted up 
by the torch of the bigot and incendiary, just as contending parties are 
victorious or defeated — each crimination and recrimination, each suf- 
fering and consequent revenge, assuming a more terrible character and 
attended by a more horrible tragedy. Nor will our more enlightened 
character render these conflicts less disastrous. This very fact will 
call into requisition a greater power to perpetrate a more furious out- 
rage and consummate a more grievous wrong. In this wreck nothing 
will be preserved. 




Our character, too, will then go lllllllMmim^^^^^^^ of coun- 

try. Surely our good na.ne is p If |||^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ry Amer- 



■ra.nr;-5-:-r''HL"^ ■■■lliiil :sX"^ 

human rights to her citizens in tbicig.. ^^ 897 891 2 # " name is 
now a passport of honor among every people under inc v — le heavens. 
The American republic yet stands as an exception — in the vigor of" her 
youth and in the strength of her manhood — to the doctrine that repub- 
lics cannot endure. Her magnanimity in war, her benevolence in 
peace, her kindness to her own people, and her hospitality to strangers, 
gives her a character everywhere. And must this, too, fall a sacrifice 
to the mad ambition of reckless men? Is there nothing too sacred for 
the invasion of this exterminating legion of government reformers? 

Her fame must go with it. — In such a destiny, the story of her 
battle-fields must pass down to posterity as the legends of the skir- 
mishes of restless rebels, who madly drenmed of the permanent estab- 
lishment of liberal institutions and republican government, and to con- 
trol and preserve them enacted the farce of selt-government. Let this 
Union be dissolved, and the story of the battles of Bunker Hill ;ind 
King's Mountain will not be put in either contrast or comparison by 
our ruined offspring; then the precious memories of those immortal 
heroes who surrendered their lives to their country and their spirits to 
God, as a voluntary offering for freedom, will be obliviated, to open up 
the pathway of glory to despots and usurpers, who would desecrate 
the temple of hberty, and sacrifice its inmates; who would pollute the 
altars of Heaven with the blood of their kindred, and, in the insulted 
name of Christian liberty, would doom their posterity to a hundred 
ages of hopeless despotism. 

The issue is theirs; made up in their own words. It is not deduct- 
vie merely; it is not an inference; it is not painted. Look at it — 
read it. It is this: 

Pure Christianity vs. Foiirrierism, Socialism, and New England Athe- 
ism. Practical Government vs. Visionary Society. The Perpetuity, 
Prosperity, and Glory of the American Union vs. The Wild Forays of 
Sectional Adventurers and Impracticable Fanaticism. 

The determination of this whole question will depend, in a great, 
measure, upon the action of that honorable body of men who stood by 
the destinies of the country under the lead of Henry Clay, and who 
will eschew sectionalism, and never cease to honor the proud name and 
cherish the noble character of 

NATIONAL WHIG. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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011 897 891 2 



